


Abattoir

by prestissimo



Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Abandonment, Abuse, Amputation, Anal Fingering, Anal Fisting, Anal Sex, Angst, Armand is his own warning, Armand is not good not even a bit not good, Armand that is not how we share our feelings, BDSM, Backstory, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Begging, Bittersweet, Blackmail, Blood Drinking, Bloodplay, Body Horror, Bondage, Brain Damage, Brainwashing, Broken Bird, Character Death, Cock & Ball Torture, Cock Rings, Codependency, Consensual Sex, Crossdressing, Crying, Drugged Sex, Drugging, Emotional Manipulation, Enemas, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Figging, Fisting, Fledglings, Forced Crossdressing, Forced Orgasm, Forced Prostitution, French History, French Revolution, Gang Rape, Gen, Grief, Hallucinations, Horror, Humiliation, Implied/Referenced Amputation, Implied/Referenced Past Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Past Suicide Attempt, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Imprisonment, Insanity, Intersex Original Character, Kidnapping, Lima Syndrome, M/M, Magic, Master-Slave Relationship, Mental Breakdown, Mental Disintegration, Mental Health Issues, Mental Illness, Mental Instability, Mind Rape, Minor Original Character(s), Multiple Orgasms, Multiple Penetration, Music, Non-Consensual Oral Sex, Nonconsensual Rimming, Not Beta Read, Object Insertion, Opium, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Overstimulation, Perfume Enema, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Physical Abuse, Politics, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Predicament Bondage, Psychological Torture, Punishment, Rape Aftermath, Rough Sex, Sadism, Scheming, Self-Harm, Sexual Abuse, Slavery, Smoking, Spitroasting, Stockholm Syndrome, Suicide Attempt, Telepathy, Temporary Amnesia, Time Skips, Torture, Unreliable Narrator, Vampire Sex, Whipping, different POVs, feral!Nicki, fugue state, light guro, maybe i should make my chapters shorter, my summaries are a study in understatements, non-consensual anal sex, sane!Nicki, violin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 20:18:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 278,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5715760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prestissimo/pseuds/prestissimo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"No one is coming for you. It is this or it is nothing, and you must learn to love it."</p><p>Nicolas de Lenfent was the Theatre des Vampires' first playwright, composer, and director. How did his nine years in hell turn him from the shattered gentleman musician into a raving madman who had to be imprisoned and restrained? What were his years like with Armand as his coven master, in the shell of his mortal life, as Lestat abandoned him to the same coven that tortured, drained, and drove him insane as a mortal?</p><p>A series of linked vignettes. [This was written nearly a decade ago. Unedited, unbeta'd, but there remains a sore lack of Nicolas de Lenfent fic in this fandom and prevailing winds say it might be safe to come out now. You don't need to read "Purgative" first (http://archiveofourown.org/works/5715598) but they are related.]</p><p>**Tags and warnings for reach chapter are now in each Chapter Note! Sane Nicolas mostly occurs in Chapter 4 (Les Innocents).**</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Armand reflects on Nicolas' early days in the coven and the threat he poses to Armand's carefully crafted self-control. He meets Justine Tatin, a woman masquerading as a male student at the local hospital, who has some strange ideas about curing the mentally ill. She is the perfect token Armand can use to bring the mad violinist under his wing.
> 
> This chapter has: Mental Instability, Mental Health Issues, Emotional Manipulation, Drugging, sane!Nicki, Blackmail, Implied/Referenced Amputation

When Eleni learned of Nicki's hands, she began to suspect that his desperate request in that last moment of sanity was rooted in a cause more sinister than anything Armand had commanded at Les Innocents.

"He has gone too far," she said, shaking her head. In conference with Laurent and Felix, the oldest ones of the old coven who were left, she sat atop a worn rough table in one of the more forgotten catacombs. 

"It is monstrous," Laurent agreed, his youthful face serious by candlelight. 

"But he is quiet now. He no longer screams," Felix pointed out. 

"He no longer does anything else either!" Laurent retorted. "It has been a week now. Armand will not allow him to feed. He has long since stopped screaming. He just stares at the wall. Armand's finished him."

"Finished with him," Eleni murmured, staring into the candlelight and thinking of Nicki's secret unusual request. /No matter what Armand tells you about me...even if I am asking for death.../

"What was that?" Felix asked. 

"Armand cannot be allowed to guard Nicki when he is like this," Eleni said, looking up at the other senior members of the coven. "He is only causing Nicki great distress with his very presence."

"What happened between them? What happened to Nicki? It was so sudden," Laurent murmured with a shake of his head. 

"He was going to come to this sooner or later. It just happened sooner than we thought," Felix said. "A bit sudden, certainly, but losing a fledgling can have such an effect on one. And one such as he should never have been made."

"The last time they fought and we tried to keep them apart they ended up finding ways," Laurent mused. "That was a bit odd, how conveniently they found places to meet and fight."

"I don't think it is good for Armand to be Nicki's caretaker right now. He can keep the hands. But we should watch over Nicki. He has always been comforted by our presence," Eleni said firmly. 

"And by his violin!" Laurent pointed out. "We can get it back from Armand."

"He forbade it. And what's he going to do with a violin when he has no hands?" Felix scoffed. 

"We can see. At least it will be...safe," Laurent said. They fell silent, unwilling to meet each other's eyes, to recall that terrible beautiful wrenching music that tore them apart and exposed their rawness. 

"It's decided then. We move Nicolas from Armand's tower to the catacombs under Nicki's old dressing room. I'll go to Armand, make our case. Even if he refuses..." she hesitated. "I'll make a case."

"Agreed. We can come together for Nicolas," Laurent said. 

"I'll tell the others. Have them begin the move," Felix volunteered. "If Armand gives you trouble, we'll all make a case he can't refuse."

Eleni hurried upwards towards the surface, having convened a secret meeting far below Armand's usual rooms. He had his private business, and as vampires, even in a coven, they respected each other's territory. That was the way it was. 

Nicolas had never known and Armand had taken full advantage of both that ignorance and of his madness. She could have spotted the signs sooner, but old habits died hard and she was caught up in this age of light and blood besides. 

Very early on, however, Armand had skulked in Nicolas' dressing room and often in passing Eleni could hear them talking, Nicki's idiosyncratic tones of speech lilting through the door as he answered Armand's questions. The curiosity was understandable--they had been present for Armand's conversations with Lestat and in later fights and threats it became apparent that Nicolas grasped something about Armand that the coven master considered unacceptably compromising--but often Eleni caught Nicolas sneaking out as early as he could before Armand's arrival at the theatre, for a measure of privacy, a whispered mutual acknowledgment all that passed between them. 

Of course, that was when he still spoke, could control himself and his movements. And when the time came to tie him to a chair to write the plays and the music, well, Armand was his constant guardian, was he not? The one with the power, the age, and the authority to deal with a mad fledgling with no idea of his limits and no control for his actions. And had she not seen moments of tenderness between them, of understanding, between the two abandoned of God and Lestat? Not anymore. The hands had changed that. 

As she climbed the steps, she prayed there was still time to save what was left of Nicki. 

~

Meanwhile, Armand sat down in his private rooms at his desk to open his accounts books and review the theatre's future year. In the corner, the Handed Girl fussed over and fondled Nicki's white hands as she sat cross legged in her wicker flower basket. She had nested in it, for it was big enough just to hold her if she curled up. She slept here sometimes in her master's private rooms, for rarely did she see anyone from the Theatre. Scraps of old playbills lined the basket, a threadbare piece of costume fabric here, a broken stick of makeup chalk there. It had all the assemblage of a theatre cuckoo bird. 

"Justine, some ink," Armand said without looking up. Her breathing quickened, and almost in a panic, she scurried on all fours to his writing cabinet, feet moving in front of her hands, one hand still clutching Nicki's hands to her breast. Her rags dragged along the floor but she was clothed for the most part in an old green dress that looked like it had once been made for traveling, horse riding. Her tongue stuck out between her fangs, she concentrated on selecting the ink he used for accounts, and a suitably sharp pen. Then she loped back to his desk and presented them in a crouch, looking eagerly down at the floor. 

"Good girl," he said absently, taking the inkwell and pen from her. She whined a little, and fidgeted. With a sigh he reached over and patted the crows nest that was her hair, a mix of silken gold and matted dried blood that came off in flakes when she moved. She nearly purred, and she hugged the hands closer to herself. 

"Sire thank you sire thank you," she said, leaning her head into his hand. 

"And do you like your new hands?" he asked almost indulgently. A tiny squeal escaped her throat at being looked at and she stared at the floor, nodding, keeping her head down.

"Sire yes sire!"

"Very good," he said absently, and returned to writing. He sat back to wait for the ink to dry, and watched her make her way back to her basket like an animal. It had taken so very long to even get her back to this point. 

That first night, perhaps there was some of the old Les Innocents coven mastery left. Nicolas had given her so much blood, far too much for the plan that came to Armand the moment he saw them lying prone on the floor together. When Nicolas thanked him, Armand felt not as the master but as the lord, dispensing...the gifts Nicki had wanted from Lestat? He loathed to think of such a comparison. 

The laudanum was old, left over from the mortal theatre. He figured at least it would not kill Nicolas, giving him time to drain and entomb Justine with lightning quick efficiency in one of the lower catacombs they were constantly excavating now for the theatre. 

What he had not expected was how tenuous Nicki's grasp on sanity had been, just how hard he had been trying, most likely for Justine's sake, to maintain some semblance of normality between his episodes. With Lestat no longer present to incite him to malice, he poured his energy into his work, petty and brilliant and ingenious and wicked and beautiful work that it was, and into his devotion to dominate a realm of darkness in which he finally chose to triumph. 

Freed from expectations to be contrarian to, he was listening to instinct, but in place of what had been his human personality there was transplanted all the lust and selfish craving and predation of a vampire, transformed and forged into chaos by what fragments of his mortal self remained. So the rabid kills, where he gave himself slavishly over the blood lust. 

Lestat had denied so deeply the truth, that he never even saw it. The Nicolas de Lenfent who he had known since boyhood, who ran away with him to Paris and shared his bed and his soul, that mortal man had died down in Les Innocents, perhaps even earlier, when Lestat himself had entered Darkness. When he had been given the Blood, Nicolas was already transcending, in the crucible of mad desperation and despairing hate, into the vampire he would be and the creature Armand had seeded. 

Armand recalled that first time they had gone out together. Nicolas was still afraid of him, and it had been with great reluctance that he had accepted Armand's rule instead of Eleni's. His mocking defiance fell flat that first night, and he drank meekly, almost obediently, in a little back alley, and Armand wondered what the others had complained of just as Nicki slumped to the ground with his victim. 

"Nicki!" he exclaimed, pulling the lethargic body off the corpse. The eyes were glassy and his head lolled but he was looking at Armand, his expression open and clear and Armand remembered why he had ordered that they torture him, beat him, drain him repeatedly, mock him with hellish screams and satanic bargains, only to bruise his neck once more with the painful ecstasy of the bite. He was so innocent. Full of words, bitter disillusion, but that was only deepened by his earnest faith, so hopelessly broken. He constantly dared the world to confirm his despair, afraid to believe but too desperate not to hope that the next time would be different. 

Nicolas smiled, painless and happy, and gently brought up a slim long finger to touch Armand's lips. 

That was when Armand saw that the blood had fountained down Nicki's chin, as if he were an animal slavering over his prey. He bent down, seeing how docile Nicolas was, and began to lick him clean, taking the time to kiss his lips. Hands suddenly tightened on his shoulders and he was thrown backwards with surprising force. 

He landed on his feet, and looked up to see the malice return to Nicki's face. The innocent young man was gone, hidden behind defenses made of hate and anger. Without hesitation Armand grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him down to eye level with painful force. 

"That one is free. The next one will cost you," he warned. Nicolas grew sullen and he rubbed his wrist when he was released. He was silent the entire way back, and when they returned to the theatre he locked himself in his room and wrote five new works. 

The next time Armand pulled guard duty, as Nicolas began to call it, though only jokingly for in those days it was not so bad yet and they only did it if he was having an episode, Armand paid for it instead. Nicolas was absolutely indiscreet and only through Armand's intervention was he hidden, and after he collapsed into the mortal death as always, they fought in that back alley like petty street rivals, kicking and biting and grappling. Armand had been so surprised at Nicki's strength. He had thought him a fledgling, and the madness could not help, but Magnus' blood ran strong. 

So when Nicolas was informed Justine was being held hostage, starving in a coffin like the Les Innocents coven of old, to be burned in the sun if he should tell the rest of the Theatre, the fragility of his sanity was finally revealed. 

In exchange for plays and music, he was granted information about her. How many screams today? Did she move at all? How closely was she being kept? Did she say anything intelligible? Would there ever be an endpoint?

The other theatre members worried and fretted, watching Nicki work himself to exhaustion until he collapsed at his desk, neglecting everything but the work. Finally Armand had no more information to give, for Justine had fallen catatonic with the hunger, and he had her strapped down and farmed out to a local brothel besides, a cage placed around her mouth to prevent her from biting her clients and her hands and feet removed. A lot of people would pay to rape a dead girl. 

So instead, he held her very existence hostage for Nicolas' work, for the near-escape of the mad fledgling highlighted just how necessary he was for the coven's survival, and how crucial it was to extract as many cyclable works from him as possible before he was lost to them completely. If Nicolas pursued anything else, searching for her, asking about her, anything but the work, she would be gone. 

He sent the other theatre members to check on him too, all too aware that each time it was a test, to see if he would tell them. 

He came himself, once, to interrupt the work, to make sure Nicolas did not forget the power Armand would always hold over him. That and Eugenie was tired of being screamed at. 

"I'm only working," Nicki said, tears in his voice. But his ink stained fingers were smudging every line and the pit musicians complained they could barely copy out the music. 

"Is this work?" Armand said disdainfully. He picked up a sheet by its corner gingerly and let it flutter to the ground. It landed on the mess of other papers that were strewn around the dressing room. He sat down at the chair by Nicki's writing desk, but not before shoving some other papers onto the floor. "This is not work."

"I can't...if you'll just let me see her..." Nicki nearly pleaded. His face was smudged with ink and blood tears, and he buried his fingers in his tangle of hair. "I can't...I'm sorry, I can't find the words..."

Armand paused in consideration. Perhaps he was pushing too hard. Justine's madame had reported she had bitten off her own tongue and made her two clients run off in terror. Now Nicolas was losing his inspiration. 

"Play something on your violin for me," he commanded. "Play it for Justine," he added, as if to imply it would pay for something. 

Nicolas looked relieved, and set his violin on his shoulder. "What would you like to hear?"

"Something new," Armand said carelessly. "Perhaps when all this is over you can go to the sea together. Play something about Justine and the sea and that country trip you are going on." He knew Nicolas had not comprehended Armand's conversation with Justine. Perhaps he still hoped Armand would grant them leave. Had he grasped how much time had passed since that fateful night?

Nicolas stared at him in disbelief and hope. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. In one swift movement he'd brought the bow down on the strings, and then he had begun a glissando of notes of what he imagined to be the sea, a wine dark Mediterranean and a grey somber Channel. The soft twists and tendrils of mercy and grace wound through waves of water and change and discovery. There was the tenderest love and the ultimate forgiveness. There was sorrow and beauty and Armand felt bathed in the Mediterranean, warmed by the long lost sun and drifting on a boat in an endless sea of safety. 

It must have been no more than five minutes. But when Nicolas put down his bow and opened his eyes, he found his voice when Armand could not, and exclaimed, "M'sieur!"

Hastily, Armand wiped at the blood tears on his cheeks. He fixed Nicolas with his most neutral stare and rose, inwardly full of panic at this moment of weakness, this revelation that Nicolas could have this effect on him. Previously when Nicolas played, Armand only attended when the violinist was in a composing frenzy, a musical interlude where nothing could touch him and nothing would be remembered but the notes. Nicolas barely acknowledged anything else, playing until the sunrise dropped his body to the floor. 

"If not the words, then the notes," Armand said coldly. "As you were." He left as quickly as he could, but it felt like fleeing. 

But he could not stay away. He kept away from Nicolas as he was able, sending intermediaries in his stead, but as he suspected, the musical moment had awakened a boldness in Nicolas. He resisted their attempts to intercede and drove them away, insisting he would speak to Armand alone. 

Early on when Lestat had just left, Armand and Nicolas spent hours and hours talking. They spoke of the future of the theatre. Armand listened to Nicolas' reckless plans, tempered them with coldness and the old words. He listened to him talk about the times, about good and evil and Lestat, Lestat, Lestat. And then, after a while, Armand began to talk as well. No, that is not how it was in history, yes, yes, Venice in those days was just like that, no, not at all true for Uccello. 

Nicolas was passionate and clever and educated in the modern ways, and in some ways he was a treasure Lestat had left behind for Armand. In a gesture of goodwill the two of them put back together Nicki's flat that Armand had ransacked. All the while Nicki was pointing out the dross of his mortal life, answering Armand's questions about why this was there, what was that really for, what cynical reason explained the presence of that displayed for guests?

And even in their fights, that constant manic flow of words, of despair and anger given life. They cleaved to each other as twin fires and for a while it seemed they could last, but for Nicki's episodes. Armand was the only one strong enough, clever enough, worldly enough, to talk him down or threaten him down or beat him down for trying to feed on the boulevard or on stage. 

Until others came to join them, none of whom matched Armand in age but some of whom matched Nicki in their modernity, there was no other master for his furor. And they had that history of torture in Les Innocents as Armand put the mortal through an immortal's trials, the burial, the drainings, the deprivation and beatings and maddening frightening taunts. There was unspoken history and so much left unsaid. 

And it had been so easy to talk to each other then. 

Now, Armand would not suffer being summoned to Nicki's room, and he had the violinist brought to his chambers instead, right before that night's show began. Although Nicki usually directed, Laurent did a decent job of it when Nicolas was too maddened to be allowed out in public. 

Armand had thought he could instill unease in the violinist, force his hand. What did Nicolas want to say to him?

He stood before Armand now, his clothes unchanged though that did not matter much for their kind or for that era. But his sleeves were ink stained and his cravat was limp. His breeches snagged and his vest was buttoned wrong.

"You look a mess," Armand murmured without thinking, and noticed Nicolas had gone very still, though there had begun a trembling in his hands. That was new. 

Nicolas spread his arms out in a universal gesture of helplessness and exasperation. Still he did not speak, though he had requested this audience. 

"How are we to take you out of doors in this state?" Armand asked. He beckoned as the coven master of old and was only a little surprised when Nicolas went to him. Delicately but swiftly he removed Nicolas' cravat and his tie, exposing his gleaming cold chest beneath the grime and blood and ink. And he was cold. He had not been fit to hunt for two days now. 

But now Nicolas was watching very carefully as Armand dipped a soft cloth in a basin and began to clean away the ink and the blood and the dirt. He closed his eyes as Armand smoothed the cloth over his shoulders and between each finger. 

"It's difficult to find words for this new world, is it not?" Armand remarked almost lightly. "What is it you wanted to say to me?"

Nicolas did not respond at once, but he made some little sound as if trying to breach the walls around his voice. It seemed he passed from mute to mania so quickly and easily he was afraid to begin. 

"I thought you were above such things. That all you cared for was survival," he said, clearly making an effort to modulate his voice and his volume and his tone. 

Armand said nothing. Patiently, he ran the water over Nicki's skin until he was gleaming once more, the very statue Lestat said he was. 

"But that's what it is, isn't it?" Nicolas asked, as Armand stood and began to comb with not unkind strokes his tangled and messy hair. "That is the true reason why you will not permit me to leave."

"Start making sense, Nicolas," Armand said, brushing out his hair a little more vigorously. He saw the trembling in his hands and knew the self control the violinist was attempting. 

"Not since *him* have I seen someone react to my music that way," he said almost desperately, and heedless of Armand's hands on him he spun around to grasp the coven master by the shoulders. "Not even I have felt the same about my music as I did before. I played to make Nicolas happy and to make me untouchable and to make sure no one could understand me. I was alone and protected and the music was my wall. But now it is different!" It was all he could do not to shake Armand by the shoulders. His eyes were enormous. "It was...the music was..." A keening desperate groan came out of him and he couldn't find the words again and he snatched at his freshly brushed hair, only to have his wrists yanked back by Armand. He looked close to tears and Armand forced him to his knees. 

"Tell me," Armand commanded. 

With tears filling his voice, thickening it, he groaned out, "In the beginning the music was my only voice because how else could I express or feel or define what I saw what I heard what he had made me and what I had asked for, what I wanted? But that changed and it dulled and now everything is too loud everything is different! And you took her away, she was going to fix me, she was going to make it quiet and I wouldn't need the music anymore! And now I can't..." he choked on the tears running down his face until he finally whispered in desperation, looking beseechingly up at the angel faced demon before him, "you felt what I once used the music to feel. Now it's just...now it really is this paltry thing I said it was, used for this dark and small evil on the boulevard. But you! You feel it! And through you I can remember how to feel it again, and I can write again! And through me you can remember how to feel at all, how to live, and how to survive in the most important way our kind can!"

For a second, Armand did not know what to say. Nicolas was beseeching him to..."You want me to be your muse?" he asked ironically. 

"Yes!" Nicolas said, clawing at Armand's shirt. "You...you had kept it hidden safe so deep that when time eroded the ability to feel in so many others your passion stayed. Don't you see? We can keep each other burning! You can rekindle my fire!"

"Yes, yes, I see," Armand murmured, bending down to grant Nicolas a soothing kiss on the forehead, who accepted it with a sigh of relief. Armand began to land small kisses over his face and neck, though Nicolas continue to murmur, "and then the music will return and I can feel again and the numbness will go away..." Armand sank his fangs very gently into Nicki's neck, taking the smallest of mouthfuls, no more than an affectionate gesture. 

He could feel Nicolas' body, tense before, relax and unwind, his hands limp and his wrists no longer struggling against Armand's hold. Armand fed him visions of them as companions, walking through the darkened halls of the Louvre, walking along that bleak and endless shore of Nicki's soul, two burning fires in the night, feeding off one another's flames. It was possible, yes, despite all that had passed between them. After all, that had been done to Nicolas de Lenfent the mortal, had it not?

"It was what you wanted from him, wasn't it?" Nicolas asked him when Armand released him and resumed his kisses. "When you asked for companionship?"

"You offer me the reckless passion and naive sensibility of your time," Armand told him honestly. "And of course the music is sublime."

"I couldn't find it until you told me," Nicolas confessed. 

"And you think this liaison will help it come back..." Armand asked, running his fingers through Nicolas' hair. He tied it back neatly in a green silk ribbon and resumed grooming him. He seemed much calmer now. 

"And the music will come back, it has to, I can feel it again and I can understand it again and I won't leave, I promise, I won't leave you, even if you release Justine I won't leave you--"

Armand's resounding slap interrupted Nicolas and left him sprawled against the stone floors so recently paved by junior theatre members. 

"Her fate is my consideration and mine alone," Armand said heatedly. "If you are earnest with these promises and declarations you must come to accept this."

"---" Nicolas began. 

"Do not ask after her. She is your failure, nothing more," Armand instructed, and spotted the scowl in time to dodge Nicki's fist. 

"My failure!?" Nicolas nearly roared, only to be driven back to the wall by Armand's arm. Armand quickly pinned him there by both wrists. 

"Listen to me," he said, his voice low and his eyes glittering, and he was beautiful in his fury as Nicolas was beautiful in his rage. "It's this or the long silent eternity. That numbness you feel will drag on and on even as you see too much and hear too much and touch too much and not even the prospect of death will make you feel you will ever escape from it. I have seen it happen and so it is that or it is this."

Nicolas was seething, breathing hard through his teeth and tears ran down his face as he glared at Armand with glassy-eyed hate, furious at being trapped and pained with desperation. 

"Choose now," Armand commanded, his voice like steel. 

Weeping, choking back tears, Nicolas placed a searing kiss on Armand's lips. The coven master enveloped him in his arms immediately, and it seemed they tried to devour each other in hate and anger and passion. 

The following night Nicolas produced a fresh stack of five new plays, and an overture that brought the house down. 

 

Every night Armand visited Nicolas it was an open secret to all in the Theatre what happened in his dressing room. The Theatre was calmer those nights, Eros finally having descended on the house, and the music they could hear was sublime. It was nothing they could put on stage, being made of pure light and warmth, but they clustered around it like moths to a flame and shot off into the darkness when Armand emerged, immaculate, the door briefly open to reveal Nicolas lying flat on his back, covered in little but blood sweat and a blanket Armand had draped over him, for his eyes would be glazed and his mind entirely pliant. It was an easy thing to permit him to hunt alone, on nights like those, when everything glowed and he could find the balance of the world. 

He would return full of energy and words, and he would dance with Eugenie and fling taunts at Felix and the entire theatre would be filled with chattering and shrieks and laughter while Armand watched from the shadows, saying nothing, expressing nothing. Or he would return and behave like any sane sophisticated Parisian gentleman, a student from the streets, until that thin veneer of normality fell and they realized they would have to search for the body before it was discovered.

Or he would come home sated and quiet and thoughtful, and return to his room to read or to write. Sometimes Armand would join him or they would go out to walk and learn from each other what they could while Nicolas was still lucid. And it was almost golden, almost something passing for happiness that was just enough. 

And it seemed Armand took delight in this in particular, that he alone could pull this sanity out of Nicolas and focus it, that he was the only thing Nicolas needed to function, the only element that could make Nicolas function. All the others were temporary distractions, playthings. 

With a hidden pang of fear, he tested this one night. They were out walking, Nicolas blood-sated and pliant, letting Armand put a possessive arm around his waist as they strolled past the hulk of the Notre Dame outside of Nicki's flat. Later Armand would drain him and they would go hunting again, Armand watching in the shadows as Nicolas snatched yet another blond haired youth from the streets, another Lelio to bloody and rend to pieces like a ravaging animal only Armand could tame. 

Nicolas was talking of Athena and her many names, and of Aristotle, of whom he was fond, much to Armand's ironic amusement. 

They stopped in the square and Armand turned to face him and his steady stream of words about the essence of things and how their very existence undermined all they knew of the essence of the world and on and on. 

"...phenomenologically--What?" Nicolas asked, pausing when he realized Armand was no longer listening to him. They were alone in the square and it was late, when no one but thieves and murderers prowled. 

"Your work has been prodigious of late," Armand said slowly, tilting his head to one side. "We have amassed a great many pieces already."

"So?" Nicki asked, confused. He wanted to talk about Aristotle. He wanted to talk about how they could redefine the world. He did not want to talk about his paltry plays for a paltry stage where he worked dark magic. 

"Why have you never thought of returning to Auvergne? You are the eldest son, and you detest your father almost as much as you do Lestat," Armand said calmly. "We have enough plays for a time."

Nicolas could feel the panic rising in his chest, that pain and pressure threatening to roar out of him and explode any second. He could have returned and slaughtered the entire village. Why didn't he? He could have. No doubt the marquis was dead by now...he could go look, could lead the villagers to tear down the castle brick by brick, for he knew they would listen to him. They had elected him their representative despite his disgrace. And these were different times now and he was both his father's son and no longer. His little brother must be a man now. Nicolas had been a jewel of the village and his brother must be...

"Please," he said, his voice breaking. "If I went..." he stopped, and Armand held his breath, wondering if he really would go, "could I take her with me? Just a little while?"

"No," Armand said, after a brief moment. He thought of the girl at the bottom of the well, her body broken, left to pull her limbs together by herself and feed on what rats wandered down there. He thought of what he would do when she had pieced herself back together, how he would haul her bone-thin corpse out and feed her gently. How he could have a blank slate to work with, and if not, he could burn pieces of her that would take time and blood to heal, slowly, painfully, and grotesquely back together. He wondered how clean he could make her mind down in that well. "I burned her in the execution well...for the last time."

Nicolas was silent, and looked at him blankly before his face contorted into a mask of pain and hatred. Armand braced himself for an attack, but instead Nicolas fell to his hands and knees onto the stones. He was shaking his head slowly and there were no tears coming from him, just dry sobs. 

Armand bent on one knee like a lord granting succor, and was surprised when he was knocked five feet backwards by Nicolas' arm. It was easy to forget how strong he was--Nicolas forgot it and scarcely used it. But Nicki didn't follow up with an attack, and with a low murmur of irritation, Armand grabbed him by his collar and yanked him upwards. Like a cat, Nicolas went limp, staring up at him with enormous eyes. 

"So that's how it is," he whispered with slight wonder as he looked upon Armand's face. "You finally did it."

"What?" Armand asked, suspicious. 

"I'm yours," Nicolas said, still on his knees, slightly restrained at the neck by Armand's grip.

"Say that again. What do you mean?" Armand demanded slapping away the upraised finger that was about to stroke his cheek. 

Nicki gave a light, soft, almost relieved laugh. "I have nothing left!" he declared softly, hands spreading out from him very slowly and deliberately. Every finger was clawed and tensed and yet he grasped at nothing. He laughed again, helplessly.

He was being held up entirely by Armand's grip on his collar, and it was as if he had no knees or strength to hold himself up. "You have taken everything. I belong to you. I am yours." You've won. You've broken me. I hate you completely and love you completely and none of it matters because I no longer matter. That was unspoken. 

"Say that last part again," Armand commanded, yanking him a little higher and choking him a little. 

"I am yours," Nicolas intoned, dully now, meek and obedient and eyes glowing with worshipful hatred and adoration as they gazed on Armand. 

"Again."

"I am yours."

"There is nothing I may not partake of as I wish," Armand said, almost as a question, in hopes Nicolas would agree. 

"There is nothing left I have to offer that is not yours already," Nicki replied lightly, seemingly at peace, as if he finally understood how it worked. A light laugh escaped him and it was tinged with a kind of madness that made Armand pause but a moment.

Then he bent and took Nicolas's neck roughly beneath his fangs, slashing through the skin easily and drinking so deeply and so quickly it made Nicki's head spin. He dropped him onto the stones and looked at him.

He was lying on his side, his face pressed against the stones as he drunkenly tried to lift his head and seek out some equilibrium. He struggled to his knees, his arms buckling at the elbows as he blinked the tears from his eyes. 

"I am all you need," Armand said, backing away and gesturing for Nicolas to follow. "Say it."

"You are all I need," Nicolas intoned, bewildered by the draining, stumbling to his feet as if hypnotized, and slowly followed Armand. 

Armand brought him to his knees a second time, pulling great draughts from him so hard that Nicolas keened without meaning to, his back arched, chest pressed tightly against the coven master as he was once more weakened. 

"I am all you want," Armand said in his ear as Nicki panted on his shoulder, then let him slide onto the pavements, all will vanished, all limbs limp. He looked like a broken doll, limbs akimbo.

"You are all I want," Nicki agreed weakly, drained of blood, emotion, will, and self. He was collapsed against the gates of the church, but his eyes were enormous as they gazed unsettlingly up at Armand. He would need blood, and quickly, for he looked thinned and desperate, his skin pale and his attempts at rising jerky but forceful. Soon nothing but vampiric instinct would drive him. 

Armand looked at the closed doors of the cathedral and beyond, searching out the candle lighting rector. The little red side door creaked, and Nicki's head moved drunkenly to sniff out the presence of mortal blood. The priest approached his prone figure cautiously--Armand had dressed him well and there was little reason to think him a thief--and once he was within two feet, Nicki had pounced and rendered his neck in half, his blood fountaining out as he drank and sucked from the wound. Armand waited politely to the side and when Nicolas was sated, collapsed onto his back and looking at the stars while he licked his chops, Armand stepped into his field of view and looked down at him. 

"You are mine. I am your lord and master," he said, and it was like stating the weather or a law of the universe. 

"I am yours, master," Nicolas agreed, without guile. He smiled, and let Armand lead him home.


	2. Nino Rochambeau

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their fight nearly destroys them both, and Armand commits a fatal error that hollows Nicolas out for nothing but screams. A starry-eyed mortal, Nino Rochambeau, applies for a job at the theatre as Nicolas' assistant, raising Armand's ire and jealousy. We follow Nino into the nightly, inner workings of the theatre and deeper into Nicki's life and history. Having seethed and manipulated from afar, Armand finally has no choice but to destroy their relationship, Nicolas' mortal pet, and the rest of Nicolas' sanity in an explosive, soot-covered climax.
> 
> This chapter contains: Mental Instability, Mental Health Issues, Mental Disintegration, Emotional Manipulation, BDSM, Bondage, Brain Damage, Temporary Amnesia, Rape, sane!Nicki, Sex with a Violin involved, Attempted Murder, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-Con, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Murder, Suicide, Nonconsensual Oral Sex, Nonconsensual Rimming, Mind Rape

Armand let him alone a little more after that, as if secure now in his position. He took to wandering again, blindly pursuing his passions, but it would only take a night with Armand to beautifully quiet him down again with threats or commands or even affectionate gestures. 

Sometimes a stranger would come who had heard of the theatre but not of Nicki, for they kept their golden goose well-hidden for several reasons. At times if Nicki was in one of his moods and wandering the halls or even the streets and encountered another vampire, the results were unpredictable. He could be confused easily by the words of the old ways, and occasionally a theatre member would find him scuffling with an outsider in the streets, having devolved into fisticuffs. In the best cases, he would play the part of the brilliant and polite theatre director, composed and gracious, and show the newcomer around before the audition with Armand, but this was always an act and inevitably someone would have to pull him away before he began to play tricks on the stranger. 

On rare occasions, an older vampire would take it upon themselves to exterminate this mad one who should never have been made, for it was obvious within moments of speaking to or observing Nicolas that his mind was unnatural on good nights and bad, and Nicki's life would be in genuine danger. But woe betide anyone who harmed Nicolas, for the reckoning the entire coven could bear, let alone Armand, upon any who moved against their musical cuckoo, was formidable. 

But from time to time, Nicolas would have an episode. From time to time, it would not be enough. Armand would find the door barred to him, furious screaming through the wood at the coven master when he was interrupted, if they were lucky. If they got the door open Nicolas would be captured by the music, fingers constantly moving whether there was a violin there or not, an endless flood of words and melodies issuing in a low tone from his lips as if giving voice to the whirlwind in his head. And they would try to calm him down, and Armand would use threats and bargains and force to get him centered once more. But there was the inevitable chase out of the theatre, or worse, Nicolas would slip out before any of them realized it would be a bad night. They'd find him in an alley, confused and bloody, or they would have to rescue a poor mortal in a coffee shop from his outrageous claims. He could not accept the skin of the world, now that he lived beneath it. They had to do their utmost to prevent the murder of his former student friends. 

One night, his room was thankfully unlocked, but Eleni could see it was going to be a bad night. Nicolas, in his usual neglected shirt and breeches, his hair messy from his fingers running through it as he thought, was pacing back and forth, a low tuneless hum droning from his nose as his fingers moved in the air, his brows knitted in concentration. He barely acknowledged her presence and he twitched in irritation when she whispered to Laurent, "get the ropes. And get Armand."

"Come to put me in chains again, mademoiselle?" he asked scornfully, but did not stop pacing. "When are you going to stop running to Armand? Any one of you could be master of this little troupe, or is it that you fear the responsibility? Do you fear the power? You waste immortality on these paltry little gifts, these little lives you lead, when our shows can be spilling into the boulevards, into the palaces! We can be ruling from behind thrones, empires of blood!"

He barely paused to snatch up a sheet of paper and scratch out a few notes on it, that vague hum coming from his mouth again. He cocked his head to once side as he gazed at her but she held firm in his inspection. 

"Look," he said, slowly and deliberately, and for a moment she hoped she had been wrong. "Here are your precious notes. Clothe yourself in them to cringe in puppetry. You could be a queen, my lady." And, grinning as he held her gaze, his hands tore up the pages into tiny fragments with vampiric speed and efficiency. 

"Nicki!" Eleni gasped, moving to stop him, but he'd already moved to his violin and was ripping into an unaccompanied fugue. He pushed her away with a shove of his hip, and she backed into Laurent, who had returned to see Nicolas furiously playing his Stradivarius, paper particles fluttering and swirling around him like snowflakes. 

"What happened?" he asked her. 

"He tore up the plays, the music!" she said helplessly. 

"Why didn't you stop him?"

"He was too fast! I didn't even know he was going to..."

But then they both stopped talking. The music was overwhelming, energy and fire and fury, twisting and tossing Nicolas back and forth like an animal he could not tame, and then Armand had appeared in the hall, a ghostly youth in somber black. As usual his face was expressionless, but they did not forget that he held the same expression when he cast half their lot into the flames and made sure they burned, using the great beam of wood as if it were merely a poker in a fireplace, and they coals of equal significance. 

He came to the door and the three watched the maelstrom, marveling at the ferocity and energy. It seemed to go on and on, the rising tension pushing them from the doorway. 

"Shut up, shut up!" Nicolas suddenly screamed, dropping into a crouch with his hands to his ears, violin and bow threaded past his fingers. "Hmmmmmmm, stop it, stop it, be silent, curse you!" he said loudly, humming that incessant drone as if to drown out whatever went on in his head. 

For once, Armand tried to gentle him. 

"Nicki," he began indulgently in the manner of a patron with his favorite, old servant who has been with the family for generations. 

Nicki glanced up sharply as if just noticing him, his face softening, but then his gaze fell upon the manacles in Laurent's hands even though too late did the vampire tried to hide them. A wordless growl rose from Nicki's throat, as if he were more feral than civilized vampire, and he bolted. He shoved them out of the doorway before they could react, and when Armand grabbed hold of his ankle and didn't let go, he thrashed so hard blood ran down his forehead and the coven master released him at Eleni's concern. 

They heard the tuneless hum trailing after him as he dashed through the theatre, pushing members left and right. Those who knew better understood it to be an escape and those who didn't got in the way, only to be pushed, sometimes with surprising force, into walls. 

"Armand!" Eleni cried out like a warning as he rose. 

"What is it?" he snapped at her, not looking forward to another night of pursuit. 

"Be forgiving, please," she beseeched. She knew his temper.

He looked at her for a moment without emotion, then broke off into a run after Nicki. 

The path of disruption was easy to follow, and anyway Armand could guess where Nicolas was headed. They crossed the river into the ile de la cite and Armand waited until Nicolas squirreled up the wall and into an open window in his flat. 

He took out the keys he possessed and quietly unlocked the front door, then made his way up to Nicki's rooms. Lestat had bought up the entire top floor (below the garret, of course) as a gift. How tawdry Nicolas de Lenfent must have felt, to be given these like a kept thing when words and truth were what he wanted. 

The second step after the landing creaked oddly, Armand thought, and that was all the warning he had before the hall exploded in a shower of broken glass and nails. He felt the glass and metal puncture his skin and the stinging pain of the microwounds bleeding him like little leeches. 

"You little shit," he muttered, secretly marveling at his planning and delighting at the thrill of anger Nicolas was able to spark in him, of feeling at all. 

Violin music had begun and quickly Armand headed for the door, aware that he would need time later to pick out the broken glass and the nails that were not rejected by his body. With some caution he opened the door to the front room, and found only the tidiness they had left earlier. It was dark and vampires did not need light to see. He knew he was dripping blood onto the floorboards, and he felt simultaneously like a panther on the hunt and a fly in a spider's lair. 

In delight he realized he was deliciously furious. All the better for the inevitable fight that would ensue. It would be a glorious battle and he and Nicolas would go home limping, probably supporting each other after Nicolas gave up against the force of Armand's strength and years and gave in to his embrace. It was always this way and it suited their pride, to fight over what they would give freely. The glass and nails were something new, and briefly Armand wondered if Nicki was growing bored, trying some new foreplay. He rounded the corner and saw the glow of candlelight from the many candleholders scattered around the study. 

In the midst of them Nicolas was thrown this way and that, sitting at his harpsichord with his violin at his shoulder, his instrument throwing up a wall of sound that seemed to strike Armand stone still where he stood. It throbbed, the pain and ferocity of the music that rose from the notes Nicolas played, and Armand felt pierced through by the despair and quickened by the anger. 

With no other refuge from the onslaught, he ghosted over the chaos of Nicki's mind, as if that could possibly give him some waypoint in all this. But the music waxed physical there, taut and sharp, and without meaning to he took a step backwards, nearly knocking over the candles behind him. The sound made Nicolas stop, mercifully, and though he did not turn around, he said sardonically, "my lord and master Armand. Bon soir!"

"Bon soir," Armand returned in kind, and frowned when Nicki chuckled to himself, low and full of malice. 

"The son of le Marquis de Lioncourt has left me in your fine charge. But I hear Eleni tell of the house you have built at the foot of the giant's tower. Does that make you his heir? Shall I address you as M'sieur le Comte de Lioncourt?" Nicki said, trembling with unspilt laughter. It was not a good joke, nor did it make sense, but the association and the implication galled Armand all the same. He remained silent, however, and waited for Nicki to finish his rant. 

"Soon," Nicki said as he deliberately chose several discordant keys to play, exactly the right ones to set Armand's fangs on edge, "soon such titles will mean little. All the lords and ladies will answer. The mob's murdering or raping or robbing or doing all manner of things, things of course any vampire could escape were he to not care about alerting them to his true nature, and so all the petty lords and masters have begun to hide. But where shall you hide?" he asked, his lips curled into an evil smirk and played those same notes to accentuate the last words. His entire body was shaking, Armand realized. 

The implication and threat were clear. Armand dressed in sober finery but arrived in coaches and held himself apart in a way that demanded whatever he wanted. Things were rising fever pitch and if they were to go walking and Nicolas addressed him loudly as his lord, his master, as Armand enjoyed, no doubt as theatrically of a bourgeois idiot as he could muster, they could cart Armand away. The coven master would have no choice but to break cover to escape, something which they actively struggled to prevent Nicolas from doing nearly every night now. 

He opened his mouth to say something, but Nicolas' mind had leapt inwards again, and he had picked up his bow, the torrent and whirl of music drowning out anything else in his head. It was almost involuntary and Armand could see him gritting his teeth against it, for as much of a relief it was, the music and the way it used him must have caused him pain. The tension was building in both music and player, and Armand wondered if he could move forth with the manacles while his guard was down. But he took a step forward and abruptly the music had stopped. Nicolas slammed into him and was clinging to him, violin and bow still in hand, but clinging to his shoulders nonetheless and trying to draw desperate kisses from his lips. Armand's head spun. No fledgling had ever confused him so much, mingled threat with need in the same space of time. 

He returned the kisses eagerly in kind, aware that Nicolas was weeping angry, desperate tears as he often did when they made love. There was no consistency in him anymore, just a storm of raw feeling and raw talent. This was the only refuge he had left where he could still have any agency at all.

But then Nicki pulled away and gasped, "I love you!"

"And I you," Armand said gravely as Nicolas peered into his face as if reading a book by dim light. 

"And I hate you so much as well!" Nicki declared, shoving Armand away from him with a growl, knocking over several candles. Armand slammed him backwards against the harpsichord keys easily, but Nicki punched him in the eye and then the chin, throwing him off balance. He stumbled, to his own surprise, then knocked Nicki's head back and struck him in the ribs and stomach, then his solar plexus for good measure. Nicki kicked out and Armand jumped back, careful to avoid the stack of books behind. He dodged Nicki's next attack and they danced among the furniture, landing kicks and punches. 

"Why chafe at me? You said yourself. There is nothing left," Armand said, slamming Nicolas down onto the floorboards and crunching his shoulder with his elbow, causing him to cry out in pain and anger. He was careful to avoid damaging the bow and violin still in the violinist's hand, however. Nicki was increasingly reluctant to let those go, and it would break Armand's heart, as loathe as he was to admit it, to see him crushed by their destruction. 

"There is still this!" Nicolas said, grabbing a nearby lit candelabra and shoving it candle end first into Armand's chest, the candles flying out and away but the metal stabbing deep and through Armand's chest. "My master Armand! Do you not appreciate my gift?" Nicolas roared as Armand staggered back in half surprise and shock. Nicki grabbed it and twisted it hard in Armand's chest, and then yanked it out, taking bits of cloth and bone and flesh with it. The gnarled and twisted silver ends came away bloody and caked with flesh. 

In an instant Armand was on him, blood dripping down onto Nicolas' chest as he punched him in the face repeatedly, but the candelabra had done its damage and Nicolas could only laugh at his lost composure. He had weakened the great coven master and caught him off guard at last. With surprising swiftness he grabbed Armand's arm and broke it quickly, and yelled when Armand broke his leg in kind. They would heal but no doubt not very quickly, not with more blood.

And still Nicolas was talking. 

"But my lord Armand, my dear master whom I have served and loved all these years, do you not like this treatment? Have you not trained your servant well with the same you have dealt him in kind, o master, what is it, M'sieur le Comte?" Nicolas asked, his speech slurring a little from his broken jaw, grabbing the poker from the fireplace and fending off Armand's attacks from his prone position on the floor. 

"What is it to us if we call you lord and master in public and they hang you in the square and ride you over the cobbles? We are only doing what you instructed, forgive us, master Armand!" Nicolas cackled. Armand ducked under the poker and they kissed very briefly against the leg of the harpsichord, before Nicolas walloped him hard across the buttocks and dislocated his broken arm. 

"O but do you prefer another title? The heir of the shittiest village in France? The abandoned tower of Paris? My lord and master Armand, le Comte du Merde--aaah!" Armand broke Nicki's fingers getting the poker from him, only to have the skin on his hand and arm stripped away by Nicolas' desperate clawing to get it back. Staggering, he rose to collect the manacles but Nicki launched himself at Armand's legs, bringing him down against the pedestal that held his marble bust of Aristotle. It toppled to the ground beside them, and Nicolas smiled grimly to see it next to Armand's head.

His expression turned to shock, however, when the same heavy bust went flying at his head. The world blurred and, exhausted, bleeding, and broken, he took the only weapon he had left before Armand could deal a second blow, and remembered in time that old story about vampires. 

He shoved his violin bow straight into Armand's heart, impaling him with it and laughing, low and evil, at the O of surprise Armand's mouth made. "My beloved lord and master, see what gifts all your servants give you in the end. What fruit all your labors bear and ever will bear," Nicolas told him as if it were an endearment of the tenderest affection. 

Armand looked down at the bow that staked him through the chest, aware of the blood that had risen in his mouth, and a spike of something very alien drove through him. He had not felt it in a long time: fear. The heart and the head. But the weight of the marble was heavy in his hand.

He smiled, and in Nicki's momentary confusion, before the violinist could deal the killing blow, rammed the bust of Aristotle as hard as he could into the side of Nicki's head. The violinist staggered, went down, but kept trying to rise, and Armand got to his knees with all his remaining strength and straddled Nicki's chest and, despite the clawing of those broken fingers on his throat scraped raw and bloody, the strips of skin hanging down and swaying painfully with each movement, kept slamming the bust into his forehead, over and over, until those fingers loosened and blood gushed across his face. 

Gradually the look on Nicki's face slackened, and his fingers hooked onto Armand's collar more for support rather than strangulation. Their eyes met, and Armand paused but a moment, chest heaving with effort, bust raised over his head. 

"Wh-what is that sound?" Nicolas whispered softly, innocently, his speech slurring and voice thick with blood. Armand brought the bust down one final time, and Nicki was still. 

He collapsed onto his side against Nicki's chest, the bust rolling away from his hands onto the floorboards. 

"Oh Nicki," he whispered, lips cleaved to Nicolas' neck. "How you suffer." He was exhausted and no one had given him such a fight in decades. All he wanted to do was rest, but he was losing blood and the stab through the heart was an invitation for death. Wincing gingerly, alone where no one could see him, he eased the bow out away from his chest, the catgut bloody and scraping against his ribs. It had passed out the other side, but not without breaking and leaving splinters along the way.

He tossed it aside in two pieces, and rested again. His eyes fell upon Nicolas' unconscious face and stroked his cheek gently as Nicki would never have allowed.

"You almost got me," he said with a rueful smile. He bent down for the blood that would heal him for the journey back to the theatre. "What would you have done then?"

But as the blood blossomed from Nicki's neck into his mouth, the mind he felt was different. It was full of light, but it was a light so hot it was obliterating everything Armand could dream of. It was terrifying and so fragile and desperately Armand scrambled away from it before it imploded on itself and dragged him with it. But it was already dark, and it was already shifting, and pale echoes sounded. Everything was still as it never was before in Nicki's head, and Armand shuddered as he withdrew.

He could feel himself healing, and delicately he wiped at the blood on Nicki's face. The bust had bashed in his forehead a little and the shape of it made Armand wonder the question Nicolas had asked. 

Gingerly he rose, fell to one knee, and then rose once more, again relieved no one could see him in his weakness. He clicked his arm back into place and pulled on his gloves to hide the skin Nicki had flayed. All this would heal. The man at his feet never really would. 

With a sigh he hefted Nicolas up into his arms, and mentally called for a coach. He could not carry him the entire length back to the theatre. There was too much blood and too many broken limbs between the two of them for walking the Parisian streets, even at this hour. 

He studied Nicki's slack form as the coach rolled towards the theatre. It was a different person who had asked that final question. Those eyes were clear and trusting and they had no understanding of what Armand was doing. Innocent. 

Was that the key?

Nicolas lay lengthwise on the bench opposite Armand in the little coach, limbs tucked in. He looked peaceful in sleep, even with the blood drying and flaking against his skin. Without his madness and his malice animating his features, he was quite handsome and beautiful, and briefly Armand wondered at the mortal life he had before he met Lestat. Before everything had gone sour. 

The dent on his forehead was still there. Armand had read of primitive trepanation, and though he doubted it could cure what the Blood had locked inside and magnified forever, it did inspire him to one axiom that was to inform his actions henceforth: Nicolas was malleable. 

They were accustomed to and had accepted the inevitability of Nicki's descent into madness. Armand and Eleni had seen it often enough in others--and exterminated them--to know how it went. But the blunt trauma to Nicki's brain changed everything. With enough trial and error, Armand might be able to produce what he wanted in Nicolas. 

The very first test would be whether this...whoever that Nicolas had been, disappeared when the damage to the skull healed. 

He closed his eyes for a moment when the coachman knocked on the door. 

"What is it? Why have we stopped?" he demanded when the door was opened, but his heart wasn't in it. 

"M'sieur, I am sorry to wake you, but we have arrived," said the driver, hat in hand. Eleni was at the door, immaculate in black, and briefly he wondered if that's how he looked to them, statuesque and untouchable. 

"Ah," he said faintly, moving to get out of the coach. He hadn't realized he'd fallen asleep. "Bon soir," he said, and began to explain the situation to Eleni, but his foot met air instead of coach step and he thought it strange that crumpling to the ground really felt the way it did when happening to a piece of paper. 

 

He awoke to a softly candlelit room he recognized as belonging to the house he had built at the foot of Lestat's tower. Vaguely he remembered fainting, and frantically checked his memory whether there were other theatre members present. He didn't think so. Eleni must have brought him here to heal. The fight took more out of him than he'd thought.

He spread his fingers out before him. The skin had healed. The bruises on his neck no longer hurt, and his arm, though sore, had mended. His hands did a coarse inspection of his chest and he was surprised to find the silver, iron, and glass completely gone. Eleni had dressed him in a sleeping shirt, and vaguely he felt like a barefoot apprentice once more, caught abed when everyone else had risen to prepare for the evening. 

"How do you feel?" Eleni was standing by the doorway, watching him on the bed he rarely used. She could not lift the stone to Lestat's lair, he knew, now his own. She was still as a cat as she watched him, and he looked over himself because he could not ungraciously say she made him uncomfortable. 

"Mended, mostly," he replied, pleased to hear his voice was normal and steady. "Where is Nicolas?"

"At the theatre. The others are looking after him but he is not well...and different," she answered, then neared him, her face imploring. "But what you did to each other!"

"Different how?" Armand asked sharply.

"Like you he was unconscious on the first night," she began, "then on--"

"How long has it been?" he asked. 

"This is the fifth night," she answered anxiously. "Nicki awoke yesterday but he is different. What happened?"

"You ask as if I know. He tried to kill me, the little devil," Armand said heatedly, and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. 

"I took...I took the liberty," Eleni said, and she would have blushed f mortal. 

"No matter," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. He opened an armoire and with the door shielding him, dressed quickly, stifling a wince at the feeling in his ribs and the sensitivity in his hands where Nicki had clawed the skin off. 

"I will go to him," he said to her, and was surprised to see her block his path. 

"I cannot allow that. I brought you here so they would not see, but I did not bring Nicki. It is safer for the both of you if you are apart," she said firmly. 

He knew his nostrils had flared in annoyance but he was hungry enough not to care. 

"I appreciate your efforts towards my care, Eleni," he said kindly, "and your discretion. I mean our violinist no harm. I wish to inquire after his health."

"He is...listless," she said after a pause. "He is slow in healing. His fingers are mending but his skull is still cracked. He was not as badly off as you were when I put you back in the coach, and you began healing at once when I gave you the coachman. The others returned to the flat and found the violin intact but the bow..." Involuntarily she covered her mouth. "What did you do?"

"He did that, not I!" Armand snarled, and the heat of it made her take a step back. "He stabbed me through with whatever he could get his damned fingers on. Get him a new one. It won't be a paired Stradivarius but it will do all the same." He redid his cravat as if to calm himself, then put on his shoes, completing the picture of a soberly dressed gentleman who did not want to attract attention. "I will see him, Eleni. I can get through to him."

"By splitting his head open?" she asked. "I have seen both your wounds and while he gave you more than your share of injury, you cannot claim his were self inflicted."

"I will not defend myself to you," he said haughtily. "What can you or the others do that will waken him? Have any managed to capture his attention?"

Eleni shook her head. 

"Very well then. I thank you for your care, mademoiselle," he said with the slightest of bows.

He fed heartily and deeply to make up for lost blood and time and energy, then ventured into the theatre. The first performance of the night had yet to begin, and Armand found the twenty odd theatre members, already in makeup and costume, waiting anxiously outside one of the new stone cells, like dolls awaiting their puppeteer. 

A few of them whispered a greeting. Armand nodded in return. 

"How is he?" Armand asked Laurent. 

"Not well," Laurent said hollowly, echoing Eleni's words. "We are taking turns. Trying to draw him out."

"Taking--" Armand began to ask, then decided to look for himself. The room was empty of furnishings except for a few candles set in hollows. Antoine was crouched down and talking in low tones to Nicolas, looking like a puppet tempting the devout saint. They had dressed Nicolas in a clean shirt and breeches and tied his hair back tightly to keep it out of the way. There was a wide white bandage around his forehead and Armand could smell the blood from it. He was surprised they'd kept it clean for this long. 

Suddenly Nicki put his hands over his face and Antoine backed away and stood up. He spotted Armand, gave him an accusing look, and left the room. 

"Nicolas," Armand said softly. He walked slowly until he was standing in front of the kneeling figure, and he lay a hand on top of Nicki's head. It was difficult to tell with the bandages, but the bump was still there. Good. 

"What is that sound?" Nicolas whispered, face covered. "I keep hearing this sound but something is missing."

/A piece of your brain/, thought Armand uncharitably. 

"What does it sound like?" Armand asked.

"I don't know," Nicolas confessed, and uncovered his face. He looked up at Armand without recognition and it frightened the coven master. "I keep hearing it."

"Is it voices? Is it music?" Armand asked, moving his hand to cup Nicki's cheek. So nice to do this while he was conscious. 

"It is...," Nicki began, and then looked off into the middle distance with sadness and shook his head. "I can do nothing. I can do nothing! They tell me my name is Nicolas and I am their playwright and director and they bring me blood to drink but all I hear is this sound! It is like music but like voice too. And it never stops."

A chill went through Armand and he thought he must be mad himself to consider what he was about to do. 

He brushed out gently with his mind and as he did so his heart almost broke when he saw the smile spread on Nicki's face, guileless, without irony or cruelty. 

There was the still soft dark he had felt last time, after that painful burst of light. And underneath it, just as Nicki had said, there was a faint pulsing echo of sound. It disoriented and upset him, and he reminded himself where he was as he delved further. 

His lips parted as the sound grew louder, and clumsily he stumbled backwards and out of Nicki's mind. The sound was nothing more than screaming. Nicolas had been right. There was nothing left but the madness. Nothing else mattered anymore. 

A little bit stunned, Armand sat back on his heels on the floor before Nicolas and studied him. His subject looked listlessly to the side, interrupted by futile attempts to crush the sound out of his head. Armand had created this. The rest of Nicolas was what happened when he tried to struggle and make sense of this senselessness. And that made Armand master over nothing more than madness entombed forever in this creature before him.

Finally Armand rose and went over to the doorway. The music was beginning upstairs, the overture, and the players had departed to take their positions and roles. They were alone. 

He returned and sat down on the bare stone floor again, two discarded angels facing each other in the dim light. Nicolas had cocked his head to one side and his ears had picked up the music. And then, in a gesture that made Armand's breath hitch in his throat, he smiled that same glowing smile of innocence. Guileless and unknowingly magnetic in its concentration, Nicolas' expression threatened to undo Armand.

Despite himself he got to his knees and moved slowly towards him, and the docile idiot watched as Armand all but hovered over him. Gently, he took Nicki's face in his hands and tilted his chin upwards. He looked puzzled now, but the trusting smile was still there, and God, how long had it been since anyone had looked at Armand that way? Nicolas never would, not like this, and the truth of this injured him.

Cursing himself silently, Armand touched Nicki's lips with his own, relishing in the tenderness they had never shared. Such soft lips, to be twisted in anger and hard defense! Never had Armand tasted them like this. Some soft sound escaped him, a wordless murmur of surprise, and Armand ignored it, sealing his mouth with more urgent kisses. Nicki yielded, so easily, so softly, leaning back only a little as Armand lurched over him and pushed him against the nearest roughly hewn stone wall. Armand knew he was pressing Nicki's shoulder blades into the stone but it was hard to care, when for the first time he had his secret lover without recriminations or violence or tears.

His hands made quick work of Nicki's shirt and the gasp that he allowed to escape Nicki's lips when he yanked the fabric off his shoulders sent a thrill of unholy delight through his core. He shouldn't, he really--but he could not stop kissing Nicki every time that uncertain murmur escaped those lips, torn between confusion and pleasure. 

"I love you," Armand said almost drunkenly, feeling stupid saying it to someone who did not understand what it meant, and suddenly the heat of the moment felt hollow. Nicki was yielding now, mollified, yielding in every way Armand could have ever thought of or dreamed of with his mind and his body and what soul there was. 

But it was not Nicolas and it would never be Nicolas. 

This truth stung the most. He would never have Nicolas in his arms like this, never trusting and pliant, loving without guile, welcoming without accusation, a companion without the ever present battle of power and dominance and pride. Guiltless and free, this Nicolas before him was as alien and empty as Armand felt in this new Age. He was not a hopeful promise of what could be. He had none of his lover's fire and passion and all that fueled the hatred and love that tore through their relationship. He was nothing more than a cheap and broken reminder of Armand's failures. 

"Why are you sad?" Nicki asked, his hand reaching up to caress the frown on Armand's face, and a short bark of laughter escaped when Armand realized he need not flinch away from a blow or a claw disguised as a gesture of affection. He had thought he could mold the man before him into someone more tractable. He had not only been wrong--it hadn't even been what he desired.

"I'm not," he said bitterly, taking in Nicki's concerned expression and his intense gaze. "I'm actually not at all," he repeated grimly, stifling Nicolas' question with a sharp, painful kiss. He moved his hands beneath his breeches and slid them off easily, angry and hurt and feeling betrayed without knowing why. 

It gave him some satisfaction to hear the muffled cry of pain that sounded from Nicolas' throat into his own mouth as he scraped the violinist's back raw against the wall while he brought himself standing, holding Nicki up against his own waist and trapping him against the wall. Let him cry. Let him scream. Perhaps then it would be enough. 

"Sto--" Nicki began, eyes wide and fearful, and Armand remembered the frightened mortal, how they had called upon his sullen, drunken evening at home. Monsieur Nicolas de Lenfent, was it? Good. And oh how he struggled and fought in his rage, and how easily they beat his mortal strength and brought the blind terror and panic rising to the surface. Never once did he plead, but his cries for aid were hoarse, his eyes rolled up in his head, and his forehead feverish by the time they had brought him to the stinking crypts at Les Innocents. So it was then, so it was now, like a second chance. 

He silenced him with another kiss, painful and sharp as he fanged on his lips and wrenched the blood from him, the moan rising from Nicki's chest as delicious as when the coven had first swarmed him. They were not gentle then and Armand was not gentle now, hands grasping greedily at flesh and leaving behind flowering bruises. He yanked Nicki's wrists together in one hand and pinned them between his bloodied back and the wall. Almost at once Nicolas twisted, trying to get free, and it made Armand smile when he saw how futile it was.

Above them the music swelled with the first act, and Armand groaned in pleasure at the jolt and frantic scream that emptied into his mouth from Nicolas when he thrust, without any preparation, upwards and into the violinist. Nicolas' mouth was an O of shock and pain and his eyes were wide and red with tears as Armand thrust against him, pinning and grinding him into the stone again and again. And he struggled, of course he did, but it wasn't the same and it wasn't enough.

His anger and frustration rising, Armand let go of his wrists and slapped Nicki's face to one side, unable to look at his expression. It wasn't right, it wasn't the same! With a growl of rage he slammed them down onto the stone floor, ignoring Nicki's kicking, and held him down by his wrists and used him without pause or delicacy, as if he could shove the answers through him.

Nicki's hair had come loose and it streamed in curls over the white bandage and Armand could feel himself returning to the awful truth of it again, and it nearly made him lose his rhythm. With determined hatred he thrust even harder, lifting Nicki off the floor, then flipped him over before he had a chance to regain his equilibrium and entered again, not bothering to muffle the groan of pain. He pinned Nicki's knees sideways against the floor in what must have been a painful split, like a frog, and thrust, and thought of the drainings and the promises he had made to the mortal M de Lenfent, of joining Satan and darkness, of flaying the skin from him and enchanting him as their eternal mindless servant, promises he didn't think he'd ever keep. 

The violinist was leaving long bloody streaks of red where he was clawing his fingernails raw against the floor in desperate efforts to escape, but he was no match for Armand's grip. His thighs and knees scraped against the floor with each thrust, leaving them raw and bloody, and his groans choked in his throat with the force of Armand's rape.

And still it wasn't enough, and disgusted, Armand stood, leaving Nicolas discarded on the floor in a bloody heap. In seconds he was immaculate again in black, and the naked violinist on the floor looked tawdry and undignified, his swollen lips and raw, bloodied skin matched with the dazed and shocked look of blind horror and fear on his face.

"Mon Dieu..." Armand breathed to himself, awful realization finally dawning upon him at what he had just done. What had he thought to create? What had he done? "Nicolas..."

Swiftly Nicki shuffled backwards from Armand, and the coven master froze in his steps. This was all wrong. He had not meant for this, not... "Nicolas, this...this was not meant to happen."

"Stay away," Nicolas said, flinging one bloody hand up, and both were surprised to find his voice steady.

"This was a mistake!" Armand nearly shouted at him. "No, wait!" He ran after Nicolas through the doorway, but not before snatching his discarded clothing. Let them think there was a fight. Anything but this.

Nicolas did not remember the passageways of the theatre, and he was injured besides, so it was easy to find him at the edge of the execution well, balancing and trying to keep from falling. The moonlight streaming in from the only opening to the surface made his body glow, and the dark blood look like black streaks across his skin.

"Careful. The ones who fall do not come out again," Armand said behind him, watching Nicolas balance precariously on the beam he had stumbled onto in his head along blind run through the catacombs. He approached him slowly so as not to startle, and saw the shiver run up Nicki's back. 

Nicolas was looking down past his feet on the wooden beam at the bottom of the execution well. There was a curious metal chest at the bottom, and a spot of green fabric peeked out. The well was still under construction--soon the ledge they were standing on would be removed and the wall bricked up with smooth stone, so not even the most ambitious and desperate vampire might be able to find purchase or refuge from the sunlight. 

"Who falls down there?" He asked quietly. This was a place of the truly dead. Armand kept it swept clean of ashes, lest the condemned return in an unimaginable form. 

"The ones who cannot keep our secrets. The ones not fit to live among us. The ones who committed the only ultimate crimes our kind hold dear," Armand said, because in the old days that was true. He had made many allowances since, Nicolas chief among them. 

"I don't want to die," Nicolas said softly, still looking down at the pit. 

"Then take my hand. I will not hurt you again," Armand promised, reaching out. "I have your clothes with me and we can return to the others."

Nicki slid his hand into Armand's, who brought him gingerly along the beam and then pulled him tightly against his chest, safely away from the execution ledge. 

"Shh," Armand whispered in Nicki's ear, aware of how he shivered in equal parts fear and revulsion from the coven master. "What happened was a mistake. But it is also a secret. Do you understand?" He held Nicolas away from him suddenly, fingers clamped around the back of his neck, just at the edge of the well and quickly enough for him to lose his equilibrium. His meaning was clear: tell anyone I raped you and the bottom of that well will be your final destination.

Nicolas nodded, and received his clothes as a reward. As he turned to pull on his breeches, Armand took a nearby construction block and struck him across the head until he fell to the ground.

 

When that evening's show was over, the theatre members flocked to their director's stone cell only to find it empty and immaculate, without a trace of either playwright or coven master or even a drop of blood.

Concerned, Eleni bid them clean up after the show while she organized a search. It did not take long--the actors, upon returning to their dressing rooms, found the door to Nicki's open.

The violinist lay on the small makeshift folding bed in sleep, bandage removed and normal in appearance. Armand sat watch beside him at the desk, sorting quietly through the nest of papers that populated the mess of Nicki's dressing room at times.

"How is he?" Eugenie was the first to whisper as they crowded around the doorway in concern.

"Improved," Armand said. "I fixed his skull."

The sigh of relief was audible through the company.

"So he's back to normal?" asked Laurent. 

"As normal as he'll ever be, you mean?" Felix said. 

"Yes. He does not remember the time he spent convalescing. His last memory is of our quarrel," Armand said, because no one but Eleni dared call them fights in Armand's presence. He only had disagreements, quarrels. If you had a fight with Armand it wasn't a fight, but a beat down, and you'd have to be insane to go looking for a fight with the coven master. Ergo, Nicolas.

"Of course, it was a mere quarrel that put you out for five days!" Nicolas declared, half-goading, half-friendly, as he pushed himself out of bed to greet his visitors, who had awoken him with their questions. He felt sore all over, and he cast Armand a side along glance before turning to the assembled company. He seemed tired, that was apparent, but in reasonably good spirits. By the color of his skin he must have been fed a victim or two by Armand to help with the healing. "Your concern is touching, your invalid care superb, according to our master here--"

Armand had risen abruptly at the word "master," and pulled Nicolas by the arm backwards, all but tossing him onto the bed. The violinist cast him a dark, mocking look, but lay down on his side and curled up to face the wall.

"He needs rest, not stimulation," Armand said shortly. "He will not rest if he works himself into a frenzy with your encouragement. You have clean up."

All the theatre members dispersed except Eleni, who withstood the inquiring arch of Armand's eyebrow and approached Nicolas. He flinched at the touch of her hand on his shoulder, and she bowed her head to smooth his hair away from his face. He did not turn to acknowledge or face her, but his eyes were downcast and she knew he was waiting. 

"Do you want to be alone as you rest?" she asked, to remind him of his right to privacy, as little as it was when he needed to be watched constantly. He curled a little tighter into himself and nodded. He was different with her, and he needed none of the bravado or the drama he displayed with the rest of the company. 

"Is anything troubling you?" she asked, all too aware that Armand sat close by, watching and listening. Nicolas seemed to sag suddenly, the weight of the answer to this question too great to bear, and he winced when she squeezed his shoulder in support. "Oh I'm sorry. I forgot you are still healing."

"Phantom pains, it would seem," he whispered almost into the canvas of the folding bed. "No, nothing new."

"Is it better today than yesterday, Nicki?" she whispered almost ritualistically, and was rewarded by his nearly imperceptible nod.

She stood and announced for as much Armand's benefit as Nicki's, "Armand and I will leave you to rest now. Will you let me know if you need anything?"

"Oui," came the muffled voice facing the wall. "Eleni?"

"Yes?" she asked, as she tried her best to herd Armand out the door deferentially.

"I'm sorry I screamed at you. And frightened you," Nicki said to the wall. "That's all I wanted to say. Good night."

"Thank you, Nicolas. Good night," she replied with a smile he could hear but not see, and closed the door at last.

 

After that abysmal episode, Armand found cause to doubt himself all too often, and he left Nicolas alone as much as he could, refusing even to visit him on Nicki's friendly requests or for guard duty. Instead he redoubled his efforts into the Taming of Justine Tatin.

Meanwhile, Nicolas returned to his work, chastened by injury and a nagging feeling of loss and misery that he could not place. Armand would not see him, and he wondered if the moment of remonstrance and repair had passed, and whatever had happened in those lost days--for he truly did not remember--had damaged their careful arrangement forever. He continued the veneer of the fool pointing out the emperor has no clothes, but inside he felt hollow and the wildness he tried to alternately ignore and cage ricocheted with greater force than ever. But the pain of his recovery kept him quiet and he remained in his room, reading and writing, going out only when prompted and accompanied by a chaperone. But it was never Armand, and he suspected Armand could set this to rights. 

The others knew, of course. He stood one night on the banks of the Seine, tossing rocks with Laurent into the water. They had fed and he had not wanted to return just yet. 

"Is he ever going to talk to me?" Nicolas asked, feeling the tension loosen as he flung a stone far out from his arm. He was a little sad tonight, and had been sober and without an episode since their fight. 

Laurent glanced at him askance and tossed his own pebble. He was dressed loosely in the working culottes of the Revolution, the mob a little more bloodthirsty than usual recently, and his shirt was untidy from striking their latest set. Nicolas was, by contrast, dressed in the same faded, casual finery he always wore, as carelessly and closely as if it were his skin. His loose white shirt was only hemmed in by his long green velvet frock coat, and although his breeches were snagged and untidy, his shoes were shined and gleamed in the moonlight. They looked like a wayward student or merchant slumming with a drinking buddy.

"Who?" Laurent asked cautiously. Nicolas rarely spoke seriously on these outings, preferring to taunt, if not outright demand, the attention and alarm of mortals to the existence of the supernatural. But he had been quiet of late, and they were all waiting for the inevitable break, when they would have to wrestle him into the chair and ignore his rants and screams and words they hoped he did not mean. Eleni told them all in conference, before the youngest of them all awoke, not to provoke him, not to stimulate him overmuch, not to let him work himself into that frenzy of mania no matter how tempting it was to feed off of that energy and thus themselves feel alive once more. 

"Our dear lord and master, of course," Nicolas said with a short huff of bitter laughter. "Armand, who else?"

"You think he's been avoiding you?" Laurent asked, putting his hands in his pockets and tilting his head to look at Nicki, who was picking up more stones to throw.

"He won't see me. I ask for him and he won't come to my room." Nicolas stopped short, smiled to himself, and shook his head. He flung a few stones in quick succession out on the water, and they skipped a few times before plunking softly into the rushing flow. "He anticipates me at every opportunity. He--" He winced, and his hand rose to massage his sore shoulder.

"It still hurts?" Laurent inquired in concern. It had been a week since Nicolas awoken, and two weeks since their fight.

"It's nothing," Nicolas said curtly, but he sat down on the hard stones despite his frock coat, drew his knees up and rested his elbows upon them, then ran his fingers through his hair. It helped little to loosen the tight ponytail Eleni had drawn it into, so he would stop messing with it and turning it into a rat's nest. He drew in a shuddering breath and sighed. He folded his arms and rested his chin on his elbow.

Laurent walked over to him but did not join him.

"I do not think he is cross with you still," Laurent told him thoughtfully and honestly. Nicolas got on with Laurent and in return Laurent neither took advantage of his times of confusion nor jeered him in his frenetic madness. As Eleni's first lieutenant, he was dependable and judicious in his dealings. "You simply need time apart to heal. Surely he wishes some distance from the incident."

"It's too quiet," Nicolas said, looking up at the moon and then to the side, away from Laurent so that his expression could not be seen. And then, so softly that Laurent thought he might have imagined it, Nicolas whispered into his own sleeve, "I miss him."

Laurent stared at him in astonished silence at this admission, and suddenly he could not tell who Nicolas referred to, whether it was his maker or the coven master. He was about to ask when Nicolas reached up for a steadying hand--his legs had not quite regained their strength--and stood.

"Let us return," the violinist said, as if nothing had been spoken.

 

The following night, Nicolas made no mention of it and seemed in better spirits, even going so far as to banter with the pit musicians, with whom he was normally in a constant state of warfare over the quality of their performance. When Eleni called upon him he had ripped into a short little sonata for her that brought those within earshot to listen, for it was solicitous and sweet and a gift. 

"Thank you, madames et messieurs, thank you, really, you are all too kind, the applause goes to Eleni, 'twas but a small tribute to our mademoiselle who holds us together, our clucking mother hen, dear Eleni, how you care for us!" he declared half-earnestly, half-mockingly. He bowed at the applause and to Eleni's alarm, put on his coat as if to go out by himself. No escort had been arranged yet, and it was too early for that. The show had not begun and Nicolas was set to direct. She had visited to make sure he had dressed properly for a public appearance.

"There is the performance first, Nicolas. It is your night to direct," Eleni said gently, her hand going behind her back and motioning for the others to clear out. Having an audience only provoked Nicolas into poor choices. They scurried away to prepare.

"Not tonight," Nicolas said, and sat down at his dressing table when she entered his room anyway and closed the door.

"They will want to see you," she said, looking at the two beautiful, ghostly statues in the mirror that gazed back at them. She brushed his hair and tugged off his shirt gently, replacing it with a fresh clean shirt that had neither blood nor ink on it. With vampiric speed she tied a cravat and proceeded to make him look more respectable. "You are the playwright and the composer of our little theatre, and it would be unusual for you to be missing from a performance for so long. Laurent has been making do these last few weeks."

"It's too long for me to stand," Nicolas said, an admission he would never have told anyone else. "And my fingers. . ."

"Your fingers still hurt? Why did you play?" Eleni asked in alarm, and reached for his hands. They were a little sore and pink from the pressure against the strings, and at her touch he winced and drew back.

"I wanted to give you something nice," Nicki said through his teeth, for his fingers hurt and he had not wanted to pay them any heed. He stood, a good head taller than she was, and she reached for his jacket, the red one with the gold thread, that he wore for performances and public appearances. He soon looked the picture of a Parisian gentleman, a young student finely attired for the evening, handsome and fierce of eye. He glared at his hands, fingers spread out before him, and then drew them against his chest, loosely curled.

"Thank you, Nicki," Eleni told him, reaching for him with an embrace.

"I made myself presentable," he said begrudgingly, letting her hold him as a mother would, but he wouldn't meet her eye.

"Are you going to go out there and direct the music?" she asked him. He stared at the floor and shook his head, looking weary and miserable. "Tomorrow, then? Do you promise?" He pressed his lips together with a frown and finally gave a single nod, and accepted her quick peck on his cheek. "Merci, Nicki! It's ten minutes to curtain. I must inform Laurent. Oh, could you please change out of these clothes on your own? I would like to keep them clean for tomorrow. . ." she looked at him imploringly.

He threw up his hands, as if the entire world was pitted against the possible state of his clothing, but she glanced at the clock, gave him a final worried glance and then rushed out the door. He sat back down, resting his elbow on the desk and nearly smudging the elbow of his jacket with ink. He had been reading and making notes of some concepts he thought might be suitable for the next play. Drivel, really. He could hear the applause, and then, something unexpected. The knocking against a door.

His door was open. The theatre was fairly deserted and they did not need a guardsman. Armand was no doubt in his private box, but as Nicolas discovered, this was barred to him and Armand still would not see him. With most of the vampires backstage and only a few stragglers in their rooms, he was left to his own devices in the theatre, and of course, why not, for it was his own conception, was it not? He followed the insistent knocking, and realized it was coming from the heavy door leading from the old alley by the side of the theatre. He and Lestat had knocked on this door asking for jobs without any hope whatsoever. Perhaps a vampire from another city was asking to join the coven.

Nicolas hesitated. He was not the best representative of the theatre even on his best nights, and tonight he was tired. Why did the visitor not watch a performance instead, and judge for himself? Perhaps he already had, and decided it was either an abomination or a delight. And then Nicolas detected something that made his spine tingle and all his senses stand on end. That smell.

"Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?" a young man's voice shouted. The banging on the door started again. Nicolas swung open the door, ducking the man's fist just as it was about to pound on the door once more. And it was a man, a mortal!

"Oh m'sieur! I am sorry! My name is Nino Rochambeau," the young man announced eagerly, speaking very quickly and excitedly as if afraid he would be cut off. "Please, I wish to join your theatre. I have seen the performances and I am willing to work for free, I can read and write, and I'll do anything you ask of me, anything, I'll sleep under the stage and eat glue, only please, let me work here and learn your music, please!"

This piqued Nicolas' interest, but he shut the door quickly behind him in case a backstage member happened upon their conversation. They were out in the alleyway, and Nicolas stood up straighter as if to inspect the young man. As it was, it was easy to figure out. Runaway, dressed the wealthy nobleman's idea of a poor man's clothes, because he had clearly bought those shoes off of a blacksmith, from all the burns and stains, but the culottes from a carpenter, if the smell was anything to go by. The name was a dead giveaway besides. He was a young student, though why he was not with the Revolution, Nicolas had no idea.

The boy--young man, really--had bronze hair that deepened into brown, and grey eyes that were bright and wide as they nervously looked upon Nicolas, waiting to be tested. He was wiry and full of energy, and Nicolas could not help feeling invigorated just by looking at him. And hungry.

But the young man had said the word that had saved his life. Music.

"M'sieur Rochambeau," Nicolas began with a slight bow. "Is it only music? You do not wish to learn how to act, to win the hearts of a lady you admire, to learn how to orate to serve the Revolution, to run a theatre? What use will you be if all you learn is music? What is music good for?"

"The music is everything!" declared M Rochambeau defiantly. "It gives everything life, it is meaning, it is how I understand and hear and speak. Everything else, it pales. But," He suddenly hesitated, and looked uncertain. "Are you not-I presume too much. Are you not M'sieur Nicolas de Lenfent? If you don't think music is everything, how is it that what you write, that dark magic I hear in the theatre, how does that consume me? I cannot imagine it from someone who believes otherwise!"

At this, Nicolas smiled, and in the darkness it could be misconstrued as a friendly smile.

"I am indeed Nicolas de Lenfent. Please, address me in the familiar, if I may do the same with you, Nino?" he asked. "We are of an age, are we not?" Nicolas was barely over twenty when he was made, and like an insect in amber, he had been frozen a young man forever, along with his madness, even as the rest of him burned away with time. He looked around the alley, and said, "let us go to a place more hospitable than this and talk. The performance is happening and I do not want us interrupted."

They walked along the street and towards a nearby tavern, one of the few Nicolas hadn't been thrown out of yet.

"Music isn't everything," Nicolas said, once they reached a private room at the tavern and sat down with a bottle of wine and a single candle between them at the table. "It is the only thing. Everything else, the plot, the words, the singing, it is window dressing, it is the vehicle, the bars, the instrumentation on which the music flies, by which the music is delivered. The music is the only thing that makes sense in this world."

"Yes, yes," Nino nodded. "Yes, that is perfect. It is the only pure thing, no? They talk of revolution, and the rights of the common man, and all the voices drown each other out. But then someone strikes up a song and it all becomes perfectly clear. Everyone stops talking, they harmonize, they become one, and we are suddenly one voice. No one disagrees anymore because the music makes them realize they want the same thing."

"Even if it is a lie?" Nicolas asked, raising an eyebrow.

"The music is not a lie. Even if what they believe because of it is," Nino said, and Nicolas loved him a little then. He poured him a glass of wine, and one for himself too, though he did not touch it. 

"And why did you want to join our little theatre?" he asked, feeling almost normal. It panicked him for a moment and the world seemed to go dark. He couldn't make sense of it, too much had happened for it to go back, for him to be here talking like this.

"M'sieur! What is wrong?"

He blinked. He had put his head in his hands and Nino's hot, mortal hand was at his shoulder and he suddenly realized he was very hungry.

"Are you unwell?" Nino asked him, concerned. He was so young.

"I have not been well. It is why I am not conducting tonight," Nicolas confessed, reaching for his wineglass so that Nino would do the same. "So," he waved a hand so Nino would continue.

Apparently Nino had been a student at the Sorbonne, like Nicolas, and yes, he knew all about that, he had even gone so far as ridden to Auvergne to look for his family but Nicki's father would not speak to him. His brother Etienne Louis was apprenticing under him though, and gave Nino a tour of the shop and dinner. Nicolas waved this detail away as if he already knew enough of his family, when inside he burned to hear more.

Nino's obsession with Nicolas began with his student friends dragged him to a performance some months ago. From the list of plays performed and the music, Nicolas recognized it as when he and Armand had first made their alliance, and he was rather at a high point in his composition. Nino went to every single performance that week--the young man blushed to admit it--and then spent most of his food money for the following week on getting his violin restrung, for did Nicolas know, Nino had begun learning the violin when he was only five years old? He had dropped it when he began to attend a grand lycee, and then brought its empty shell to la Sorbonne, where he had hoped he might find a teacher or at least get some girls with it. 

Now he was re-learning and making up for those years of neglect, but he needed to learn composition. He needed to learn how to understand the music the way Nicolas did. Even if he couldn't, at least he could sit in the shadow of his brilliance and pay homage to the music. Couldn't Nicolas put in a good word with the director of the theatre, Armand de Romanus, and allow Nino to apprentice under Nicolas and work and live at the theatre? He was embarrassingly out of money, having spent most of it for more lessons. But either way, he would sleep in the gutter if he had to, so long as he could sit at Nicolas' feet and listen and simply watch him work. To be so young and have such brilliance and depth of feeling in his music--Nino had to understand and had to learn.

Nicolas could take no more. This was beyond the pale of what he could stomach and it was too much of the same, too thin and too stretched and it was so wrong. He could hear himself breathing and it seemed like a very loud noise, but Nino had poured himself another glass of wine and he was probably drunk already and no doubt hungry if he was broke and had Nicolas remembered to bring any money? Everything was too mortal. It was too. . .real. It couldn't exist, it, not with everything that had happened to him, he could not believe it. Neither world could exist with the other, not without him breaking and splitting in two, and he was so hungry.

"M'sieur?" Nino asked nervously. Nicolas was staring at him and had been for a while. "I am sorry, I realize my confession might make me seem appear quite mad. But I only want to learn the music so I can tell the truth of the world. I assure you, I am not dangerous, I--"

"Mad!" Nicolas nearly barked, and clapped both hands over his mouth, his eyes wide. He rushed forward grasping Nino by the shoulders. "No, no, you are not mad, what are you, some shadow of my life?" he asked no one in particular. "You are perfect. You are better."

"Nicolas," Nino breathed, not quite certain of himself anymore, but his idol was right before him and had just told him he was perfect and without knowing what he was doing he kissed him. The man was ice cold--Nino remembered he had said he was unwell--but soft and the surprised sound he made invited a chuckle from Nino. But then suddenly he felt like he was falling down a deep pit, and as he dropped he could see the music like a tangible entity before him, enfolding him and choking him in its embrace, until nothing but darkness and unconsciousness slipped through him.

Nicolas backed away, wrenching himself with all his willpower off of the mortal's neck. He didn't want to kill him! No. He was hungry, yes, and he had never, ever, stopped in the middle of feeding, but he could not let this continue. He wanted Nino. He knew that much. He wanted to drink him dry, drink everything out of him and all the knowledge and all the life.

Here was someone as obsessed with the music as he was, someone who almost understood, who had, in a frightening manner, tried to pursue every single thread of Nicki's life. What had he discovered of his time in Paris, of his disappearance, of his loss of reason as reported by Renaud and by Roget? He scowled at the memory and rubbed his face, now warm with Nino's blood.

The boy was slumped against him, but he was breathing and Nicolas sighed in relief. He propped him so that he rested his cheek against the table, as if in a drunken sleep. Perhaps he would forget, and go back to his life. Nicolas fumbled in his own pockets, slipped out all the currency he had and left it on the table. He stumbled to his feet on unsteady legs--Armand had broken them in several places, and they were slow in mending--and cursed when he bumped against the table. The boy did not wake, and once again Nicolas checked to make sure he was breathing. He had never taken such care with a mortal before, not since. . .not since her.

Nino knew the truth of the lie and he did not care. The music was all that mattered.

He walked home in thought, ignoring Eleni's worried chiding about how could he venture out alone, who let him leave the theatre by himself, who was on guard during the performance, where he had been and whom had he fed on, would Felix go find the body, was Nicolas safe, did anyone see him, and shut the door. He slipped off his jacket and sat at his desk and put his head in his hands. He felt very weary.

Nino Rochambeau. The others could not know. He could never work here--no mortals allowed, and they would kill him in an instant if he came to these back rooms and--he looked up suddenly. What a flash of brilliance! The illusion should be complete.

He slammed his door open and walked purposefully towards the stage, where the show had finished and there was the usual crowd of well-wishers and hangers-on who wanted to show their affection and visit their favorite actors or actresses, and of course, Nicolas. And he pushed past everyone politely accepting the flowers but declining the requests to go backstage, and said, "of course! How ungracious of us not to invite our most loyal fanatics to sit with us a while! You have stayed so late! Come come!"

It earned him glares and vocal protests from the theatre members, but it was too late, for the eager mortals had already pushed into the narrow corridors.

"Nicolas!" Eleni hissed at him, and he had never seen her so furious. "What do you think you are doing?" She pulled him into a random room.

"I am making the illusion complete!" he said loudly, and laughed when she slapped a hand over his mouth to shut him up. "If we are to play mortal, what kind of vain actors and performers would we be if we did not allow the occasional audience into our private quarters to sit and flatter us? What other theatre in the boulevard never permits anyone inside who is not part of the company? Have some modern sense, Eleni!" He opened the door and backed out of the room with his arms open wide. Immediately he was spotted by two mortal admirers, who pressed against him in the narrow hallway. He mirrored their smiles and saw, out of the corner of his eye, Eleni's thoughtful expression.

"Haah, my workspace? It is a mess, an utter mess, I tell you, except when I work!" he declared in mock enthusiasm, leading them off to his room. Eleni could not get a word in, not with the mortals there as conversational shields.

Ultimately it was only five visitors, but it had thrown the vampires into a state of shock and disarray. By the end of the night the main stars who had been beset by all five mortals had cornered Nicolas in his room and were shouting at him at the top of their lungs.

"What did you think you were DOING, permitting them here?" Jean asked.

"This incredibly rash action--" Michel began solemnly.

"What if they saw something that led them to suspect--" Marie began to shriek.

"Don't feed where you sleep, don't feed where you work, you always say, well what would you have had to hide from them anyway?" Nicolas retorted. "You're mummers, you're actors of the macabre, and these mortals pay to see the skulls and the death! They would be almost disappointed if they didn't see a coffin, my dear Marie! In fact, next time, I recommend you drape more cobwebs over your mirror and that disgrace you call a toilette!"

"You insolent--" Marie moved towards Nicolas.

"Stop it, he doesn't know what he says half the time--" Jean said, struggling to hold her back. She seemed intent on clawing Nicki's eyes out as he sat complacently on his red cushioned chair in the middle of his room, the three of them crowded around him in accusation.

"Oh I know what I'm saying. I've seen syphilitic mortal whores with tidier toilettes and rooms than yours, darling Marie!" Nicolas declared, rising from his chair now to dance and speak in her contorted and angry face.

"Do you hear what he is saying?! Nicki, I am going to teach you exactly how to speak to your elders. Jean, let go of me!" Marie said.

"Yes, Jean, do stop groping Marie, we know you've had eyes for her since the sixth century but now is not quite the time to act upon one's baser instincts, my son," Nicolas told Jean in the manner of a solemn cleric. "The Lord expects better from his flock of demons and Satanists. What are we to stoop to, the common village priest?"

"Nicolas," Jean warned, disappointed and wounded, for he had once been a seminarian. "Please stop saying these things. I know you do not mean them."

"Haah!" Nicolas gave a strange half-laugh. "And if we had mortal assistants, mortals to spread stupid gossip about our stupid fights and stupid quarrels and stupid things that we don't mean, how much better would that be for our protection? How much more normal would that be, if our mystique and macabre sensibilities, already in keeping with dear Madame Guillotine, were further normalized with the inane prattle of the peasantry?

"We do not eat, we do not order in wine of any sort, and we do not toss out any waste, well, hardly any for our competitors to care of. How much the better to hear gossip of Marie's love affair or Sebastian's secret wart or Tristan's longing for a life on a simple farm? Even if they're a pack of lies and we invite nothing but our fellow thieves and liars and frauds under this roof, at least it will forestall the whispers when the Revolution comes to our doors!"

"What are you proposing?" asked the one voice Nicolas had been hoping to elicit with all of Marie's easily aroused screams. Armand had appeared in the hallway at last, and all the tension and energy left Nicolas' chest.

He didn't speak for a moment and ignored the brief scratch of Marie's claw against his cheek. It left a trail of blood that healed quickly and flaked dry against his skin. It did not matter to him--he never lifted a hand against anyone in the theatre but the coven master standing before him. Armand was dressed in his customary black and he looked the same as ever, though if he carried his arm stiffly Nicolas was certain that was not his imagination, for he had broken it using a heavy iron poker. He looked beautiful. It hurt to see him. 

"Mortal servants backstage," Nicolas said, his voice breaking slightly. "Theatres normally hire some outsiders to take care of waste. We don't need to--we're fast. But it looks unnatural."

"I'll consider it," Armand said with a slight nod and a neutral expression.

"And," Nicolas added helplessly, because Armand was turning away and that hurt more than his legs or his fingers, "when the tide turns, you'll be so much closer for them to hang, m'lord."

Armand's face whipped back at him in a brief flash of anger and smoothed out again just as quickly, and Nicolas' collar suddenly choked him as it was dragged down so his face met Armand's at eye level. He looked pleadingly at Armand, miserable, unable to voice or tell him what it was he wanted. Armand relented and released him, so that Nicolas staggered back and fell against the armoire. He rubbed his neck gingerly and grimaced.

Armand looked about to speak, but his eyes fell to the sleeve of the red frock coat Nicolas wore, the same he'd been stolen in as a mortal, and he left without even another glance at the assembled group. 

When he had gone they turned to Nicolas again, but this time to guide him to a chair, to placate him, to soothe their wounded genius. Even Marie petted his neck, checking for bruises and wiping the blood from his cheek and kissing its cold surface. He let them, taking small comfort in their touches, but they were like the ghostly touches of a freezing wind when one is already numb on a winter's night. When he seemed calm enough to their satisfaction--his chest no longer heaving from breathing hard, his nostrils not flaring from trying to control whatever broiled inside, they let him alone. 

The following night he woke at his desk as early as he could and slipped out of the theatre before anyone had thought to look for him. In his glance backwards while he closed the door, he crashed into a fumbling youth who had been sleeping on the doorstep. 

It was Nino. 

"M'sieur! I knocked all day but no one answered, so I thought I would wait until the evening," Nino explained hastily, and then blushed when he realized how close Nicolas was and how their noses nearly touched. 

"I thought I told you to call me by my name," Nicolas said almost desperately, afraid Armand would arrive any minute and find them, afraid...of what? Nino was more in danger from his own hunger than anything. He glanced down at the bundle at his feet. It was a violin case, and what must have been a small bundle of clothes and books. What small forms hope takes. 

"I know, I just...I didn't know if you still felt the same after last night," Nino said almost shyly, and finally wound an arm around Nicolas' waist to pull him close, much to the vampire's surprise. So that's what he thought had happened.

The smell of the blood coming from him was intoxicating, and Nicolas had to remind himself of where he was. Never feed where you work. Never feed where you sleep. He had enough presence of mind for that, at least. For now. 

"I have to direct the show tonight," he whispered for the sake of their intimacy, his cold cheek ghosting along Nino's hot mortal skin. "Come see tonight's performance. I can let you in. Then see me backstage. We'll present your case to Armand."

"Really?" Nino asked in delight. He grinned, embraced Nicolas around the neck and kissed him hard on the lips, and then did it again, his exuberance making him forget his shyness and his awe. Nicolas had to swallow and think of far away places and above all to pretend to pretend to be sane, because otherwise he would have torn open Nino's throat and had his blood fountain all over the alleyway. "Oh thank you, thank you!"

"Leave your things with me. I'll take them to my dressing room. You'll regret this once you see how we live," Nicolas warned, because he couldn't help it, "but you can come backstage after the show." He shifted back and pulled out his pocket watch. "I have to prepare. Have you eaten yet?" The youth shook his head. "Here. Take this, no, take it, that'll be enough for dinner I think, but come back in an hour. When you return, tell Felix in front your name. I'll let him know in advance to let you in." He hesitated and then took the merest sips from Nino's neck, just enough to warm himself and enthrall the mortal in the erotic embrace of a little drink. With a smile, he sent him staggering back into the night. 

Nicolas sighed as he looked at the forlorn bundles before him, and then quickly stole them into his room, secreting them between the wall and the armoire. He went to find Felix, told him to permit a Nino Rochambeau, yes, the noble general's nephew, free admission tonight in whatever best seat was unoccupied, never mind how he is dressed. 

Nicolas told himself he was doing well. He was behaving in the face of all temptation. His hands were steady and he felt like he was balancing on a high wire and about to fall, but at least he was balancing. He worked and moved as quickly as he could, as if to finish his preparations before an oncoming storm. He cared too much about keeping Nino, this enchanting fool who seemed to understand music the way none of the theatre members did, and who was intoxicated with Nicolas in an agnostic fashion and thus whose hope was immune to his darkness, the way Lestat's had not been. 

Still, he shivered at his desk, as if he could feel a fit creeping up on him. And then the bell was ringing for five minutes to curtain and Eleni was at his door for final inspection that he did not appear stark raving mad. 

"Well?" he asked, standing up and pulling his frock coat in order. In truth he had not changed since last night as she had bid. The pallor of not feeding made him look pale against the brilliant dark red of his coat. It was easy to believe he had not been well, and he was erratic enough in the neighborhood that they could explain it as feverish ramblings. 

"You look very handsome, Nicolas," Eleni said, sounding almost proud as she redid his hair. Powder was not in fashion at the moment due to the prices and his dark chocolate brown hair was curly and soft, making him look younger and more boyish than he really was. She tied it back tightly at the nape of his neck to keep it out of the way and so that he would not fuss with it as he unconsciously did, then straightened his cravat and his socks. 

"Bon," she pronounced, and nodded, granting him permission by handing him his violin and a conductor's baton. There was a violin solo in the third act and no one else was quite able to replicate it. When Nicolas was not fit to perform they left it out and played a small clavier fugue instead. He took his bow as well and bowed without saying anything. This was easy. This would be nothing, pale shadows of walking and doing this a hundred times as someone else with a different face and a different heart. He could hardly bear it but for the knowledge that Nino was in the audience tonight. When he faced the crowd to bow for the applause, Nicki spotted him in the seventh row, eyes alight with excitement, cheeks aglow, and looking unbearably young. 

He turned back with a secret smile to himself and nodded to his musicians. And then the theatre itself seemed to disappear as the marionette orchestra and their puppeteer conductor propelled themselves into a frenzied performance to accompany the light touches and mimes of the caricatures on stage. The third act came, and the theatre fell silent as the violinist stood and the spotlight swiveled.

Then he made the mistake of glancing up at the owner's box, where Armand sat, white face glowing from the shadows. He was looking directly at Nicolas, and when it had never bothered him before, now it jarred him to be the focus of the coven master's attention. But the music was calling and nothing else meant anything and he glared up and sliced the violin bow across the strings and the music sliced through him and he was lost.

Two violins played instead of one, it seemed, and the performer on stage was but a pale shadow of the musician in the pit who was in the grip of the notes. And it was a song of sorrow, and it was not the song that was meant for the performance but it fit all the same, and poor Antoine on stage bowed and pantomimed to it, contorting his figure. Nicki's eyes closed and he could feel his body hum and vibrate to the notes against the violin. Yes, all of it, meaningless, nothing but this loss that stretched on and on without any end, and wasn't that what Lestat could never accept, that everything they had ever cherished would wither and grow meaningless and that the only thing worth clinging to was this loss and sorrow and loneliness passing further into loneliness so quickly there was not even time to dwell on one loss or the next. 

The melody bowed, growing lower and then rising up into a scream of pain and agony. Antoine shook and jolted and writhed in the air as if being twisted on his puppet strings, and fell still on the ground. Nicolas's bow whipped off the string in a final screech, and he stood in total silence, chest heaving, aware of the blood sweat on his forehead, which he quickly wiped off with the sleeve of his red coat. So that was why they dressed him in this. Often he was not coherent enough to care, too captured by the music.

Then a sound, and another sound, and the applause thundered through the audience behind him. He turned to face the standing ovation and bow, but he spotted Nino and his tear-stained cheeks first, and he could not stop the smile from spreading on his face. Nino understood, he thought. Nino knew. Their eyes met and he smiled again and forgot to bow before he turned around to begin the final act.

A movement in the owner's box caught his eye, and at the sight of Armand's frown, he visibly shuddered. Armand was looking out at the crowd, scanning, searching, at what Nicolas had been smiling at. Nicki normally did not acknowledge the audience for that long, considering them largely unnecessary excuses for creating music. He would find Nino, surely. But the act was beginning, Antoine had revived, Nicolas had to direct the music.

The damage was done, however, and his hand was shaking. He couldn't stop it, but he could hope that Armand could not pick out Nino in the audience. If he knew how important the boy was to Nicolas, if he became jealous. . .Nicolas lost his rhythm, forcing the first violin to lead, much to Jean-Paul's consternation. He couldn't stop looking back at Armand, who was now gazing fixedly at the audience, searching and searching. But there were many mortals, and Nicolas was unpredictable, was he not?

The music was still there, and it was the only thing that kept Nicolas standing at all, bearing him along. He watched Armand, his hand barely gesturing at the orchestra. Jean-Paul was glaring at him now and he blinked and shook himself and looked up at the stage again and tried to connect the music he felt with what he had to translate to coordinate this‚ this collection of puppets before him. He glanced up again at Armand and with a mixture of alarm and relief realized he had left. It felt as if a weight had lifted from his chest, and he caught the thread of the sound and the pulse of the orchestra, and began directing once more.

Afterwards, he ignored the pit orchestra and hurried to the wings and the door to backstage so he could meet Nino before any of the other theatre members did. There was the usual assemblage of hangers on, and Nino stood off to the side looking at them enviously.

Distractedly, Nicolas fought off the flirtations of the visitors, not caring about playing the playwright and composer tonight, and in almost one swoop wrapped his arm around Nino's shoulders and pulled him backstage, where vampires ran around with their puppet strings cut, cleaning and sweeping and conducting the usual post-performance rituals.

"Nicolas!" Eleni was the first to come close to them, and she instantly scented Nino's mortal presence. "More visitors tonight?"

"No," Nicolas said, and he put both hands on Nino's shoulders and set his face by the mortal's, side by side. "An apprentice. A violinist."

"An apprentice?" Eleni asked incredulously, answering Nino's polite bow with a small curtsey of acknowledgment. "Why do you need an apprentice?"

"I have not been well," Nicolas said meaningfully, and he began to lead Nino down the hall towards his dressing room, ignoring the surprised glances of the other theatre members who passed them. "I need someone I can teach, full-time, to direct when I am having a bad night. No one else here will do it. Someone who can play the solos."

"Jean-Paul is first violin--" Eleni began to say, following them down the hall.

"Jean-Paul would prefer Pietro conduct if only he were a better player," Nicolas said flatly and without condemnation.

"Nicolas, wait," Eleni said distractedly.

"He understands the music, Eleni!" Nicolas said almost beseechingly. "He applied last night. We will feed and shelter him, and in return he will study with me and work for us. He says he'll do anything."

"Anything?" asked Armand, who had been sitting at Nicolas' desk when they entered his room. He had been waiting there since the end of the performance, having decided enough time had passed and it was convenient to re-establish their old arrangement.

"M'sieur de Romanus," Nino said politely and earnestly, seeing his opportunity for first impressions. "My name is Nino Rochambeau. I play the violin, sir. I wish to apprentice myself to M'sieur de Lenfent, to learn how to write the music he does, to work the way he does, and to play the way he does. I'll do anything, I'll sleep under the floorboards, I'll, I'll eat the glue, just please, let me study with him in your theatre!"

Armand's normally placid face produced a slight curl of the lips as he heard Nino's entreaty before it smoothed out once more, and he seemed a cherub listening to the begging of a human creature whose concerns were of a plane that concerned not those who live in Heaven.

"Our ways are strange, and our composer even stranger," Armand said, his voice liquid and seductive, but it set Nicolas' teeth on edge. He had been guiding Nino down the hallway with one arm casually slung across his back like an old companion, but now he gripped his shoulder tightly. "You may find us unusual, even unnatural. Would you willingly live with those who practice the Dark Arts?"

"Well sir, do you practice the Dark Arts?" Nino asked bravely, looking a little sick at the idea.

"No," Armand replied with a forgiving angel's smile, but it sounded more as if the Dark Arts were child's play compared to what Armand practiced.

"I am relieved, sir. For if the Dark Arts can produce such music, I would subscribe in blood and brimstone tomorrow night under whatever moon you can produce. I would willingly live with even the most unnatural among you," Nino said solemnly. "And now that I know you do not call Satan your master, why, how can God not smile upon the creators of such sublime art? Please, M'sieur, what trial would you have me undergo, what test? I will answer your questions. I only want to live and work and study with M'sieur de Lenfent in your theatre."

Armand's eyes flicked from Nino to Eleni, then back to Nino without ever looking at Nicolas. 

"You will not speak to anyone of what happens inside these walls. Nothing that you see or hear or discover directly or indirectly will you ever convey to anyone in writing or in speech or other manner of signaling," Armand began. "The daylight hours are yours to do with as you wish, and you are not permitted backstage then. Once the sun sets your time is ours and ours alone."

"He'd be *my* apprentice, not to the entire theatre's!" Nicolas protested, and Nino looked at him in alarm when he saw how he shook. His hands were in fists and he trembled, and Nino thought it strange that he should be jealous of such a tiny detail when there would be little cause to doubt Nino would devote his time wholeheartedly to Nicolas and the music alone.

"Leave us," Armand said to Nino and Eleni. "Eleni, please give him a tour of the theatre and introduce him to everyone as Nicolas' apprentice. These terms are clear and he begins tonight. Close the door behind you when you leave."

When they had departed, Armand stood up and neared Nicolas until they were almost touching and he could smell where the blood sweat had risen from him during the performance. Armand was, as always, immaculate in black.

"What makes you think you can do this?" Armand asked him without heat.

"You're not my keeper--" Nicolas began.

"Ah, but I am," Armand pointed out. "I made particular promises to Lestat to that effect, did I not? And have been sorely tried in fulfilling them."

"He is a mortal, Nicki!" Armand said. "He cannot know our secrets! What will he think the first time you have a fit, or rant, or attack him?"

"I can try. For him," Nicolas said, agitated and becoming more so as he realized Armand was trying to work him towards a mood. It was working. "You can't have him! He's mine!" He took a shuddering breath, trying to stop the trembling. When did that start? He never used to tremble in Armand's presence before. It was so difficult to control himself, and his thoughts were crowding even when he couldn't even pick out anything distinguishing.

"Will it take his cooling corpse in your arms and his blood splashed across your walls before you realize how ridiculous that sounds? And you hope to teach him, what, how to become a raving lunatic who dribbles notes out of his ears while the boulevard cheers and calls it art?" Armand asked scornfully, and easily blocked Nicolas' punch and twisted his arm around his back. He shoved him against the armoire roughly, grinding Nicolas' cheek into the wood. Nicolas had not fed yet, and Armand was stronger by centuries besides.

"Let go of me!" Nicolas growled, making frustrated, incoherent sounds as he tried to buck Armand's pressure and throw him to the ground. His free hand went around and tried to claw for any part of Armand he could reach, scraping at his hand, his arms, his face, and then pushed against the armoire to try to dislodge himself. He kicked violently backwards at Armand, but it was no use against the older vampire. His attempts only made him more frantic, and he groaned out his irritation, finding it increasingly difficult to find the words to convey his anger. "Leggo!" He seemed about to scream, before Armand shoved him hard against armoire again, knocking the breath out of him.

"Shh," Armand said, his other hand reaching up and grasping the sides of Nicolas' face, pinching and squeezing his cheeks together to twist his head roughly to the side, exposing his neck. He sank his fangs in with cruel force, as deeply as he could, and drank until he could feel Nicolas' futile struggles growing weaker. The blood was rushing into him and the darkness had returned and there was that bleak empty frozen ocean again, with the bonfire that was constantly blowing out on the shore, a pillar of flame that flicked and extinguished itself without cause or fuel or meaning. When Nicolas grew limp and languid, Armand released him, catching him in his arms and laying him gently onto the bed.

"You do not need Nino," he whispered, arranging Nicolas' limbs and brushing his loose curls away from his face. Nicki's eyelids fluttered as he struggled to focus on Armand. He grasped the sides of Nicolas' head between his palms, forcing him to meet his gaze. "All you need is me."

"Not anymore," Nicolas murmured, so softly Armand wished he had misheard. Nicki traced a languid finger along Armand's jawline before his hand dropped back onto the bed. "Why?" Why did Armand insist on this? He had already been refused. 

"That shall change," Armand assured him. "I have been neglecting you of late, haven't I? But you only need me. And you are mine. It will be as before. I promise you that." He rose and closed the door behind him, leaving Nicolas on the bed, too weak to rise.

"No," Nicolas whispered to no one, mind and body weak and floating as he drowsed, docile and quiet on the little folding bed, exactly as Armand had arranged him. "Please, no."

Nino returned a few hours later, breathless and full of excitement, only to find Nicolas curled up against the wall on his little cot, staring at the door. 

"Nicolas? Are you unwell?" he asked softly, approaching him slowly. 

Nicki's eyes flicked up to him slowly and he looked astonished to find him even alive. He reached for Nino with a twitch of his arms and the mortal fell into their embrace without needing to be told. 

"What is the matter?" Nino asked, as Nicolas' fingers probed around his collar and cuffs for bite marks.

"Eleni was there the entire time?" Nicki asked, suddenly aware of how hot Nino's mortal skin felt beneath his fingers, and how much blood Armand had taken from himself. Was this precisely what he had planned for, trusting Nicolas had nearly none of the control others did over his feeding instincts?

"Yes, she gave me the entire tour, even the catacombs. She said the theatre is carrying the motif into the lifestyle," Nino intoned seriously, repeating her improvised explanation. "Everyone was very friendly and welcoming. They seemed to think it so unusual that I should wish to join them. Has no one ever applied to join the theatre as an apprentice before?"

"Not in its current incarnation," Nicolas said with a sigh, his finger idly stroking Nino's neck. The mortal frowned and said, "they told me to be careful with you when you are unwell. Am I hurting you? Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?"

It hurt then, when Nicolas had never cared about what the others said before, that they would tell Nino what to do about him. He shook his head and Nino kissed him worshipfully on the forehead as one does a sick patient and Nicolas could not help himself, his neck and his blood were beneath his lips and it was rushing into him, that feeling and longing to understand and bring the music to life and to spread that truth to all who would hear. A small whine of pain escaped Nino and Nicki's eyes snapped open and his hands shoved Nino away from him, now full of his strength even with what little blood he had taken. The mortal looked dazed, but not hurt, and it must have been pure instinct that caused Nicki to seal the wound at his neck. He felt better now, though, and he less commanded by the Thirst. To think he had almost--but he had stopped! He had not stopped, only ever with Nino.

"Your kisses dizzy me with their intensity," Nino breathed when he recovered, kneeling and sitting on his heels. "Why, you look better!"

"You raise my spirits," Nicolas told him seriously, and rose to retrieve Nino's possessions from behind his armoire. "Let me hear you play."

"I'm not very good. As I said before, I only re-learned it recently," Nino explained nervously as he opened his violin case. It was a fine violin, Nicolas could tell, and his parents had been generous, not expecting what their gift would buy. The young man tuned and tightened the strings and looked inquiringly at Nicolas for a request. 

"Whatever you have been working on," Nicolas said, standing contrapposto with his hands on the small of his back, waiting. "Do you need sheet music?"

Nino hesitated, then shook his head before bringing the instrument to his shoulder. 

When Nicolas played, not only was the violin his sole anchor to this world, it was the current of anima that directed him as if he were a wild creature granted consciousness but for the span of the music before descending back into dumbness and confusion. Even if he began with his own ideas and melody in mind, the music would inevitably whip him into a frenzy that broke out of control without regard for his limits or health or safety. Watching someone else play was always an alien experience to him, to hear music produced but not to sink directly into the source and be the voice through which it channeled. 

It was no different when Nino began a sonata by Bach. He played sweetly, but with spirit and earnestness, concentrating on producing what he thought was the intent of the composer. Nicolas nodded in time approvingly. He was accurate and he was good, and he would do. He could not compare in technical perfection to the mimicry of vampire skill, but in feeling and quaint creativity he was a unique glimmering candle in the dark theatre company.

But it didn't seem quite right, to hear him alone like this, and without thinking, Nicolas swung his own violin onto his shoulder and played a continuo, balancing off of the notes he heard Nino execute. The result was two violins, two voices quite different but singing together in a dance of shy introduction. Wooden boards creaked as theatre members piled around Nicolas' doorway. 

Nino stood seriously in the center of the room, playing and trying to add flourishes to match Nicolas' looser, richer syncopation of notes. They half expected the mortal to be left behind as Nicki fell into his musical frenzy as he had so many times before, as if he could not help but fall into that deep well of darkness if he but scraped the edge of it. But Nicolas stood before him, brows furrowed in concentration, eyes fixed on Nino's expression. He was not lost in the music. He was lost in his dance with Nino, and the mortal, whether he knew it or not, defined the limits of how far Nicolas would go. 

And when the sonata finished, Nicolas put his bow down as if entranced by a spell that was breaking. 

He looked momentarily caught off guard by the sight of the troupe peering in through the doorway. He shook himself, rubbed his face, and clasped Nino to himself almost possessively. 

"Well!" he announced to them. "What did I say? He has potential!"

Eager to humor Nicki when he was tempered and behaved, they cooed over Nino, petting him and flattering him over his playing. Antoine promised to show him how to tumble. Marie confided she thought Nicolas should make a test of a composition for Nino, when he was ready, to put in a play. He nodded solemnly, appearing to put it to thought, and it was as if they had all just begun and he had not yet descended and his mind had not snapped irreparably, forever lost where it had scattered in the darkness. 

Had he known Armand lurked around the corner, listening to them with bated breath, he would have slammed the door and never let Nino out of his sight. 

True to his word, Nino never asked to be permitted backstage during the day, as inconvenient as it may have been. He slept in the stage bed, in fact, that they stored stage left, in the early hours of the morning when the sun was just beginning to rise. Never did he question the strange hours or why no one ever drank wine or had to stand in line for the privy, why everyone was impossibly elegant and beautiful and so cold in the early hours of the evening, only to be nearly feverishly hot near dawn. 

This could be because he and Nicolas were drunk on each other. Every evening Eleni unlocked the door to backstage to let him in, and he picked his way to Nicolas' room. Sometimes he was sleeping like the dead, with nothing capable of rousing him, so Nino busied himself with tidying what little there was to the small room. Nicolas was fairly neat and clean. He needed little and his plays were always stacked, rarely needing cross outs or corrections. His clothes were luxurious, but he rarely wore more than a loose white shirt and breeches with socks and finely shined shoes with heels. He owned red shoes with heels of gold, that Nino could see in the closet, and he had known from his visit to Auvergne that his family was the wealthiest and most successful in the village, that Nicolas had been disgraced and disowned by his father. He had never returned from Paris, and good riddance. 

But other than clothes that he wore only at Eleni's bidding, and the violin, and books he would acquire from time to time, Nicolas had little in that room to call a life. It was all in his work and his music, Nino thought admiringly. 

"Nino," Nicolas whispered, and at once Nino shut the door and sank into Nicki's arms. 

"I missed you, lover," Nino said with a thrill of delight as he lifted Nicki's shirt, then kissed him once more. "You're always ice cold!"

"My apprentice is never around to warm me up," Nicolas complained mildly, and sat up. There was work to be done and much more of this and he would have to feed, and soon. "I'm hungry."

"Here, I brought you some bread," Nino said. "You know it has been a week since I started here and we have never dined together once?"

Nicolas laid his hands on the loaf and laughed, a low chuckle. 

"My dining habits are criminal," he said. "But thank you." He rose and pushed his arms into the sleeves of his dark green coat. 

"Leaving me already?" Nino teased, wrapping his arms around Nicolas. 

"I'll be back within the hour. You know my habits," Nicolas said apologetically, kissing him deeply. "Eleni wants to talk to me tonight so you won't be able to have me in bed all night the way you've managed for, what, five nights now? I'm beginning to think you don't want to apprentice at all, except in the arts of love!"

"Truly, it is difficult to focus when I have a master like yourself," Nino conceded gravely, before squeezing the crotch of Nicki's breeches, making him jump. 

"You play me so easily!" Nicolas exclaimed with a growl, turning around and kissing Nino against the wall, grabbing him by his rear and grinding against him. 

"Nicki? Are you in there? Nino?" came the knocking at the door. All in the theatre could hear the recreation they were up to the past week, of that much Nicolas was well aware, but he could scarcely be bothered, not when Marie had it in her head to start inviting admirers backstage too and Felix was starting to wonder whether they might not keep a stable of willing "entrees."

"Yes?" Nicolas asked, reluctantly pulling himself from Nino and opening the door to Eleni's inquiring face. Nino's hair looked fairly rumpled but he had managed to compose his clothes in time. 

"Your room is so tidy," she murmured, looking at Nino. "Nicki, were you going out just now?"

"Oue. I'll return within the hour," he promised, already sidling past her in the corridor. 

"Could I speak with you when you return?" she asked, and he nodded, waving a dismissive hand of acknowledgment behind him as he departed. He ducked his head against the snow flurries that were beginning to fall and walked swiftly, trying not to let his hunger drive him. He needed to be swift, silent, get back to the theatre and to Nino. The hunger was becoming a distraction rather than something to revel in, and for the first time he could recall, he felt the wildness in him quiet, and the panic depart with every passing second he spent sinking into the smell and heat and taste of Nino Rochambeau.

The vagrants were easy and quick and he left them where they lay, and although he was not tidy, no one would question how they had died in the cold. He walked back a little unsteadily, vision wavering as the blood swam and drained through him, giving him a heady feeling of drunkenness and satiation.

He stumbled through the door, fingers hanging off of the door frame, and just remembered to close it behind him before he was too far from the entrance. He was trailing snow in, he knew, but he was warm and filled with blood and ready for an evening and the music was swelling in his head already and his fingers were itching and he wanted Nino.

He stopped dead in his tracks and his world dimmed into a single point. Armand was talking to Nino, bidding him farewell in his placid way, but Nino looked perturbed as he stood in the hall, half-turned back towards Nicolas' room. Nicki quickened his pace but by the time he reached them, Nino was blocking his path and Armand was already far down the hall and turning a corner.

"What was he saying to you?" Nicolas asked absently, staring after where Armand had disappeared to.

"Nothing," Nino said, looking at Nicolas with concern. He tugged gently on Nicki's sleeve. 

"He didn't talk to you about me?" Nicki asked warily as he shrugged off his coat. He looked over his desk and pulled out his chair, and rolled up his sleeves. When Nino didn't answer, he looked over and saw him biting his lip and watching Nicolas anxiously. Nicki set his hands on the desk, leaning on them. "What?"

"He just wanted to see how I was settling in," Nino offered. "Are you going to compose tonight? Will you tell me what you are thinking of?"

"I don't know, I just. . .I hear it," Nicki said, already distracted but unable to stop thinking about what Armand might be scheming to do with Nino. He could not be trusted, and he did not like the way Nino and Nicolas looked at each other. "I heard it when I woke." He grumbled a little to himself under his breath, unable to find the words, on the edge of humming a melody, and the fingers on his left hand tapped out the notes that would have formed the beginning of a theme.

"Is it the beginning of a new play or a new piece by itself?" Nino asked curiously, sitting down on the bed.

"It's. . .talking," Nicolas said absently, not quite paying attention now as he sat down and pulled a sheet of pre-lined paper to him. Nino had spent the day sharpening his quills and Nicolas groped for one and dipped it in the ink and began writing down notes without pause, correction, or thought. All the while he hummed low under his breath, his left fingers moving without stopping.

"Can I watch over your shoulder?" Nino asked softly, entranced, but Nicolas had not heard. Nino rose and bent over Nicolas' shoulder to watch him writing music for the first time. He did not pause to think, and it seemed his hands and fingers never tired, constantly moving and transcribing from some endless fount of notes and music. Without meaning to, Nino tried to hum the notes Nicolas had already written, and found they needed no correction at all. He had thought Nicolas would at least go back, revise, perhaps change a measure or two, but everything he had written down in his precise notation was the final version as it was meant to be.

But now the handwriting was changing and when Nino asked, "Nicki?", the concertmaster merely twitched and continued writing at the same galloping pace as before. The noises his throat made sounded less like a hum and more like the noise of some animal, and it suddenly appeared unnatural to Nino, that someone should write like this at such speed of thought and movement without pause for what was nearly an hour now. A stack of paper had already accumulated and Nicolas was well into something else.

Nino backed away a little and sat back down on the bed, and thought of what Armand had said to him. Nicolas looked feverish, his eyes bright and his mouth moving on its own, and suddenly it was like watching a great insect or bee constantly working and chewing its way through something in a hive of activity.

"Hnnmgh," Nicolas grunted, his quill dropped to one side, leaving a large ink blotch on the paper that Nino scrambled to sand over. In the next second he had pressed himself against the wall, his hands to the sides of his head because he could not believe what he was hearing. Nicolas had grabbed the violin, and in a lightning quick movement had brought the bow on the strings and pressed out a riot of sounds that made Nino moan in pleasure at the sublime passion and beauty they enshrined.

By now Nicolas was lost, for the music had him tightly in its grip, tossing him back and forth. His hair was loose and very curly, his mouth slack against the violin as his whole being pivoted on the instrument alone, his fingers a whirl of movement as his body contorted with the force and ululation of the music. 

And though it was beautiful, what the music did to Nicolas frightened Nino. He had seen Nicolas perform, yes, and that was wild and energetic and explained by an artist's devotion and passion to his art. But this was the crucible of creation itself and he had not realized how it burned and consumed Nicolas whole. The notes tore through Nicolas, suspending him on tiptoe for a languorous note that was held through two bowing that made Nino choke on his own breath, before it descended into a languishing melancholy lament, invoking regret and memory, remembrances of hopeless ventures and meaningless sacrifices. It built in pain upon pain, attracting figures in the doorway to listen before they darted away, leaving Nino alone to bear witness and weep as the music tossed Nicolas, finally, to the floor, finished and spent.

Nino hid in the corner, knees drawn up against his chest, hugging himself tightly as he watched Nicki's prone unconscious figure lying in the center of the room. What he had witnessed was. . .Armand had warned him that their ways were unnatural, that Nicolas neither knew his own limits nor was well. Strangely, Armand had offered his own protection if Nino ever felt unsafe and threatened. At the time, the offer had disturbed Nino, for he had known nothing but affection if not begrudging curiosity from the theatre members, and nothing less than what he felt to be reciprocated obsession and love from Nicolas. But now he understood why Armand had made the offer he did. Nicolas was not . . . natural. He wasn't well. It was the only explanation Nino could understand. No human could sustain it, and he could not grasp how the Nicolas that lay on the floor was the same that he had made love to for nights on end. In moments he had transformed into some manic creature, a wild animal that knew nothing but how to dance and channel music that came from a faerie place, untamable and untrustworthy.

"Nicki, you fool," Felix muttered. He had passed by the door and seen Nicolas sprawled there. Thankfully, he did not spot Nino hiding behind the cot in the corner. Nino watched as Felix placed the violin and bow reverently in their case, and then gently lift Nicolas off the floor. Nicki hung limply in his arms. "Nicolas?" He glanced over at the desk and the stack of new music written with an approving eye. "Well at least you've done some work."

He shook Nicolas gently, and then settled him in his chair. He shook him roughly this time.

"Nicki!" he tried again, and curiously, stood back as quickly as he said it. Nino soon learned why, for Nicolas snarled awake as if to attack, and Nino thought he saw fangs. No, surely not. He had merely been overwhelmed. Nicolas' music was nothing short of divine, even if the manner in which it used him was monstrous.

"Welcome back," Felix said mockingly. "You played yourself out again, it would seem. Most people settle for a bow."

Nicolas hissed at him. "Don't you have something else to hulk over?"

"Armand wanted to see you," Felix said, taking a grip on Nicki's arm.

"So you are a messenger boy now as well? Congratulations are in order--you have moved up in the world, m'sieur," Nicolas said tartly, rising with Felix as he was nearly dragged out of the room. "Soon we shall all be bowing to you instead of the Sun King."

"Shut up," Felix told him, their voices fading down the hall.

Nino rose from his hiding spot and shook himself all over. He looked at the music. It was sublime. It was beautiful. He could not imagine why something so frightening and repulsive could produce something so remarkable. He looked down the hall, and followed. He saw Felix close a door and depart in a different direction, and sidled up to it. He could hear Armand talking on the other side.

"And what was young Rochambeau's response to your...musical interlude?" Armand was asking. Nino thought it strange--if anything Armand looked younger than he was.

Nicolas did not seem to reply, but Armand said, "I thought as much. His continued presence here presents a danger to himself as much as it does to you."

"Is that what you told him today? While I was out?" Nicolas asked.

"Would you deny that you have complete control of your actions?" Armand inquired. "Eleni tells me you've been remarkably untroubled lately. But that is still not the same as in control."

"Why are you so concerned about Nino? Since when have you cared for the well-being of young mortal violinists?" Nicolas asked scornfully, and Nino thought he could hear tears in his voice. "Or does this have more to do with why we haven't talked since I broke your arm? Since you realized how quickly the mob can turn?"

"That is not what this is about," Armand warned him.

"So what is it? What's wrong, Armand? Upset it's someone else fucking me instead of you? How sweet, I didn't--" A loud slap interrupted Nicolas' words. Nino was certain Armand had struck Nicolas. "Back to love taps, are we?" seethed Nicolas, and the question ended in a growl of rage. Something crashed into furniture, and Nino, with his ear pressed flat against the thick wood, could hear heavy blows being dealt. Wood scraped against stone, and metal clattered.

"Don't presume to think I would feel threatened by anything you do," Armand said, but he sounded out of breath. Nicolas gave a faint moan of pain and defeat. Cloth was being ripped and torn. "But since you ask, I will say your recreational activities are distracting."

"Always such a proper little shit," Nicolas said snidely, and would have said more had his voice not been suddenly muffled. He gasped, and Nino felt a surge of jealousy. It no longer sounded like they were fighting. It sounded like exactly the opposite, until he heard a slap again.

"Stop that," Armand said.

"You can't have me and think you can tame me," Nicolas said, and he sounded like he was having the breath knocked out of him. Nino recognized exactly what would have made him sound like that, and he suddenly wanted to walk in on them and strike Armand, to pull him off Nicolas and scream at them for their betrayal.

"You're mine. Everything you are, were, and desire to be," Armand huffed. "Do you see?"

"Gnhk," Nicolas gasped, for Armand had his hands around his throat and was squeezing even as he had Nicolas' knees up over his shoulders and was thrusting hard enough for Nicki's head to be bent at a right angle to his chest against the wall.

Nino could hear a desperate scrabbling against wood and stone, of objects being thrown and of cloth being tugged, before Nicolas made a sound that was a gasp and a cry of pleasure at the same time that dissolved instantly into a pained moan.

There was silence for what felt like an eternity. Finally, Armand said, so softly that Nino strained to hear it, "I own you. Don't ever think you can get away from that."

Wood scraped against stone. It sounded like a chair was being pulled across the floor. Nino ran for it, shielding his eyes with his sleeve so that no one would see his angry tears. He could not hope to learn from a madman who wrote down notes with no process and played like a wild animal possessed until he dropped to the floor. He could not stay with someone who would betray his love, for Nicolas had mocked Armand, but not refused him. What did he have here?

He sat on the bed brooding, waiting for Nicolas to return. Hours later, Nicki staggered in, eyes glassy, looking haggard, exhausted, and weak. He was cold to the touch and he had no words for Nino as he stumbled, half-tripped over his feet, and fell back onto his cot. His shirt was torn and one of the sleeves had been tied into a loop that was later loosened. It was stained with red and it looked like blood. His breeches were ripped and buttoned the wrong way and he looked around the room, unfocused and in a daze. He looked like he had been attacked.

"Nicolas," Nino said, feeling his anger ebb at the sorry state Nicki was in. "What happened in Armand's office?"

Nicolas stared at him as if not really seeing him there. It was a wild-eyed look accented by the mess of his hair, and Nino realized there were ugly blue bruises beginning to form around his throat. Nicolas made a sound that was something between a laugh and a sob.

"Whatever happened between you and Armand while I was out?" he said, his voice raw and choking. Someone had been throttling him.

"What?" Nino asked, baffled. He could not bear to see Nicki like this, and he approached to embrace him, only to stop when Nicolas twitched backwards as if to shield himself. "Nicki, what is wrong? It's me."

Nicolas ran his trembling fingers through his hair, messing it up even more, and held them there.

"It's a bad night," he pronounced, his eyes closed as if trying to calm himself. "I should go out, I should get out of the theatre, I should eat."

"I can come with you--"

"No!" Nicolas' eyes snapped open. "No, they'd kill me--well, they'd kill you if they found out."

"Nicolas," Nino said warily, suddenly aware that when the others said Nicolas was "not well," they might have meant in the head and not in the body.

Nicolas laughed, a low despairing sound that frightened Nino. He winced at the bruises that ringed his neck, and Nino could no longer stomach it. 

"Did he force himself on you?" he demanded, unable to be gentle in his anger. 

"What?" Nicolas asked, looking suddenly afraid. 

"Nicolas, if Armand has some power over you...what happened in his office? I overheard part of it--it is why I was angry when you first returned. But now I see the state you're in, and my mind can come to but one conclusion," Nino said. "Are you--were you lovers? Did he force himself on you?"

"It's not so simple," Nicolas whispered hollowly, staring ahead of him without looking at Nino. "I can't tell you." He squeezed his eyes shut in pain. "Do not ask me again."

Nino bit his lip in frustration and swiftly put his arms around Nicolas before the man could protest. Nicolas jolted in his embrace, but finally shoved his face in Nino's chest and gave a muffled scream of rage. 

Eventually he fell asleep in Nino's arms while the mortal lay in thought over the events of the evening. Armand had an unholy bargain of some kind with Nicolas. There was a complicated relationship of dubious consent. The theatre needed Nicolas' work--few could produce work of his caliber and genre--and presumably Armand owned the theatre. Blackmail? Why did Nicolas live at the theatre? Some of the other theatre members did, but many also slept elsewhere. Why did Nicolas rarely leave except for his brief outings when he dined?

He looked down at Nicki's slumbering face, his expression peaceful and handsome, full of potential. He was undisturbed for now, but it was painfully clear now to Nino that Nicolas was not safe here. He could take Nicki out of here. He could ask his uncle's housekeeper to give them shelter, to keep it a secret from his father. 

Nicolas needed rest. If this was the kind of treatment he received regularly from his employer, it was no wonder his mind was of a fragile constitution. Whatever hold Armand had over him, Nino would shield Nicki. The composer had been too long lost in the woods and alone. 

The following day, Nino went to his uncle's house, hat in hand, and was surprised to learn that his uncle had been arrested. The housekeeper was terrified but she was only too eager to have Nino return, if only it was to encourage him to denounce his relations. 

He accepted some food, at least, but he would not take her money. He could come back any time, she said. They did not know where they had taken his uncle but Nino had his heart with the people and for that he would always be welcome. He had an ailing friend who had struck his head? Yes, there was no harm in staying here until the general returned. Did he have any references? They could not risk harboring anyone, begging Nino's pardon, but he was a kind-hearted soul and too forgiving of aristocrats. Nino promised to provide some.

Despondently Nino returned to the theatre, swept the aisles, and sat on the rooftop to read the sheet music Nicolas had scrawled nonstop the night before. He weighed down some pages with a rock and sitting cross legged, tried out some notes with his violin. Even playing hesitantly, he felt the beauty of Nicki's soul thrum through him. But it wasn't the same as the music Nicki /played/. This was for the stage; there were markers for acts and fermatas and extended rests. 

The music that Nicolas had played...that was what Nicolas could not make coherent in words. Nicolas had looked like an automatic insect or a machine when he churned out the music for the theatre. But the interlude seemed like an interruption, as if he could stand no more of it and he could contain it and channel it no longer.

Nino flipped to the final page of what he had written. It was unfinished. The note ended in a long sliding scrawl as the quill had scraped off the page and been tossed aside. The music had been caged for long enough and now it had to be given voice. With a cry of frustration, Nino lay back on the rooftop and covered his eyes. He was becoming unused to sunlight, and he wished Nicolas was not such a night owl. Maybe he and Nicki could come and watch the sunrise some time. It might cheer him, to be here far above the theatre. 

He spent the rest of the day learning what Nicki had written the night before, then deposited the pages in the cabinet of rotating works once Eleni had let him in. 

"You cannot see Nicki tonight," Eleni said to him gravely, watching him put away the papers. 

"What? What's wrong?" Nino asked in alarm. 

"He is not well," she said, as Nino had heard too many times from the others. No one had ever said what "not well" really meant.

"Let me see him. He fought with Armand last night. If he is injured and I did not see--" he began, but she blocked his way. He thought he could see a commotion down the hall that was dispersing. Other theatre members slunk past them, looking at Nino guiltily, and it had gone quiet. 

"They quarrel. Nicolas tries Armand's patience whenever he can, and Armand does not suffer fools easily," Eleni explained gently.

"Nicki is brilliant! He's a musical genius!" Nino said shrilly and angrily. He ducked under her arm before she could react and ran down the hall to Nicki's room to fling his door open, ignoring Eleni's shout for anyone to stop him. 

He was unprepared for the sight that greeted him. The mirror in Nicki's dressing room was broken and cracked, hanging half off the hinge. The armoire looked like it suffered a similar fate, one door hanging off the hinge and swinging. The cot was upturned and there was a bright splash of blood against the floor. It dawned on Nino that Nicolas' room barely held anything because most of it was periodically destroyed. 

All of these details he caught and dwelt upon because he could not comprehend the tableau before him. Armand, immaculate and implacable in black, one hand behind his back, the other clenching a fistful of Nicki's hair and pitching his head forward to the desk. He leaned solicitously over the seated figure as if to inspect the work. Heavy iron manacles bound Nicolas to his chair, leaving his hand free to write. The bloody gag tied around his mouth and his seething, labored breaths through it, his lips working around it, unable to do anything else. A faint sheen of moisture beaded his forehead. He appeared to be in a trance, for his eyes followed the movement of his hand intently as it dipped the quill in its pot and wrote out another line of words, without looking at the letters themselves. 

A play. Armand was forcing Nicolas to write a new play.

"Leave him alone!" Nino cried, moving forward and shoving Armand away on sheer surprise alone. There was a blur of movement and a great blow to his chest. He felt himself slammed against the wood of the armoire and the breath knocked out of him. As his vision cleared he saw Armand standing over him, while Nicolas struggled in the chair just beyond, his head tossing and his pained screams muffled by the gag.

"Felix. Hold him," Armand commanded behind him, and Felix took up what had been Armand's position, holding Nicki's head so he remained visually focused on the paper before him, so that he would have little other input. Armand turned back to Nino, who pushed himself against the armoire, leaning away from someone who looked younger and yet much more sinister than he. "He will not work any other way some nights. I told you that our ways are unusual. Or was it hyperbole that made you say you would pledge yourself to the Dark Arts if it was those satanic rituals that had created such music?"

"These are not the Dark Arts. This is slavery and abuse. Are you drugging him on opium? Addicting him to laudanum?" he asked accusingly. 

Armand drew back in surprise, and the ghost of a smile passed across his lips.

"O, were it so simple to have Nicolas do what we need," Armand replied, amused, finally.

"And why force him against his will? The theatre does well enough and you have enough plays for a lifetime," Theo argued, still pressed tightly against the armoire. "I have seen them; I stock the library!"

Armand looked at him for a second, like a panther considering whether inconsequential prey was worth it. "Without us," he said pensively, "Without me, Nicolas would not survive for very long. He gets distracted and confused, and when he is excited he easily works into a frenzy that puts his own person in danger. These are not times for mad fools to be wandering, sinking into their passions with abandon. He needs taming."

"Taming?!" Nino asked incredulously. "He is a man, a human creature, not an animal!" Suddenly Armand grabbed him and hoisted him up by his collar, and dragged him so his face was nearly pressed up against Nicki's. The composer paid no notice, fixated as he was on the movement on the pen, and a low steady growl issued from his throat, sub lingual and humming the background music to the words he wrote.

"Is this someone in command of his faculties?" Armand asked lightly, forcing Nino close enough to touch. "He barely knows we are here. With any luck he will be better by tomorrow, and this will have seemed like a hazy nightmare."

"Nicki!" Nino shouted in his face, and Nicolas looked up but stared straight through him. A shove from Felix elicited a snarl, but the paper caught his eye again and he resumed writing without pause. "What made you like this?" Felix's guilty look at Armand did not escape his notice, nor the look of warning Armand granted in reply.

"Follow me," Armand finally said, beckoning. "Nicki will be like this for the rest of the night. If you try to release him, all he will do is tear the place apart and play music until he hurts himself. If you want a lesson in Nicki's history and his work, come to my office."

A few nights later Nicolas was coherent again, and fortunately they had wrung two new plays and three scores out of him. No one commented on Nino's nightly visits to Armand's office--he was barred from Nicki's room for the time being, and Felix refused to permit him entry. He learned of Renaud's theatre, of Nicolas' beginnings there. He learned of Nicki's struggle with depression, or nerves, as it was called back then, and the loss of a lover that was the implied catalyst for his break with sanity. 

That night Nino left Armand's office, paler and disoriented as usual and head spinning with new facts. To his pleasant surprise, Nicolas was dressed in new, tidy clothes, energized, warm to the touch, and immediately suspicious of Armand's intentions.

"Nicki, he is not trying to turn me against you!" Nino repeated, exasperated. 

"Let's go to my house," Nicolas said suddenly, putting on a black coat that made him look a little too young. "I'm tired of this place and I don't want to talk of Armand."

"I didn't know you had a house in Paris," said Nino in surprise. 

"You found my sorry excuse for a father in Auvergne but you could not find my residence in Paris?" asked Nicolas incredulously, taking both their violin cases. 

"Your records in Paris are largely incomplete. After the Sorbonne you simply disappeared," Nino explained. 

"You're too pale," Nicki said suddenly, bringing a concerned hand to his cheek. "Hasn't Eleni been giving you food money?"

"I'm fine. This is just stressful, with Madame Guillotine coming around the streets," Nino said. Nicolas' hop from topic to topic was dizzying. 

"And you do not join the mob?" Nicolas asked, amused as they left by way of the stage. No one stopped them, unconcerned once they had made certain of Nicolas' security. They waved down a coach and headed for the Ile St Louis. 

"The ideals of Locke and Voltaire and Montesqieu, they are transformed," Nino said. "The common people listen only to blood now, and the students have lost their way. It is good you left la Sorbonne when you did. There are few safe places for the wealthy now."

"Mob justice," Nicolas murmured. "The people have taken it into their own hands at last. Their nighttime urgings, the impulses they put out of their heads. Can it be they are listening to themselves at last?"

"What are you saying, Nicolas?" Nino asked, alarmed. 

"I am saying," Nicki said patiently, getting out of the coach and tugging Nino to a tall narrow doorway of a townhouse. "The people have ignored their instincts and lied to themselves. For too long they have satisfied themselves with the meager handouts of the thieves and masters they call lords. That model was not sustainable, and we are experiencing its bloody dissolution."

"People are dying! Innocent--"

"People are always dying!" Nicolas said scornfully. He unlocked the door and let them in, leading Nino up a pitch dark staircase. "Eleni said she returned and cleaned the place with some of the others..."

"You mean when...from the quarrel?" asked Nino.

Nicolas laughed under his breath as he lit a few candles by the entrance, revealing a well-appointed set of rooms, filled with books and cherry wood book shelves. 

"Armand and I kicked the shit out of each other and destroyed half the furniture in this place," he muttered, almost relishing the memory. "So yes, a 'quarrel,' if that is what Armand wishes to call it."

"It seems well-restored," Nino said, feeling like he was being permitted into an inner sanctum. He stood before the pianoforte.

Nicolas looked at the bust of Caesar thoughtfully. It had been cleaned, and his last memory of it was it coming at his head. He shuddered and turned back. 

"If you have a house here, why do you live at the theatre?" Nino asked, confused. "You work alone." Nicolas did not need anything from or at the theatre to do what they required from him.

Nicki shrugged. "I direct. I fall asleep working." They were simple reasons, but they were not the reasons of someone with his own life.

"Can we stay here a while instead of the theatre?" Nino asked. "We would have the privacy and the peace. Armand would not force you to...to his whims. You could be your own man."

"Eleni would worry," Nicolas mused, but he seemed intrigued, as if he had never bothered to think of this idea. "I've never bothered to see if the others sleep at the theatre. Do you not like the theatre? I thought you wanted to sleep beneath the floorboards."

"Nicki," Nino began, hesitant. "When you are...unwell, do you recall what happens?"

"Sometimes," Nicki said, his expression growing dark and sullen. He turned away, snatched a few books from the shelves, then put them back without looking. His fingers went to his violin case without his eyes following and snapped it open. "Not always. What has Armand been telling you?"

"A few nights ago I found you tied to a chair. He had forced your head forward, painfully, it seemed, and you couldn't stop writing without...you were snarling," Nino said like a confession. 

"And yet you are still here," Nicolas said, watching him carefully with eyes glowing in the candlelight. His hands were still but they rested on the edge of the violin case, barely touching the instrument. 

"I won't let them do this to you. You could be at the Commedia Francaise or at least publishing your own plays to be performed. But Armand keeps you like a caged animal and it seems you hardly know it!" Nino said, his anger bringing a flush to his cheeks. 

Nicki stroked the side of Nino's face sadly. He seemed on an island where nothing could touch him, a place where Nino could never go. 

"More things on earth and heaven, Horatio," Nicolas uttered, and his smile was bitter, and the look in his eyes was angry, and suddenly Nino felt afraid. "Far more than I could have dreamt of in my philosophies."

"Please, Nicki, I'm talking of your safety," Nino said, too frustrated and having long since passed the point of propriety. "The way Armand treats you is monstrous and the rest are either cowards or accomplices!"

Nicki's hand drew back from his face in surprise and he gave a sudden bitter bark of laughter. 

"And who do you think commended me into their care, knowing full well who they were?" he asked. The walls were too close and he should not have come here. 

Lestat surrounded him here, this gilded cage of wealth only serving to remind his mortal self of how unreachable and unfathomable his mortal lover had always been and would always be, and how, when Nicki had given up everything and thought Lestat had understood why the de Lenfent's wealth and the de Lioncourt's poverty meant nothing to him beyond an embarrassing joke of fate, he had twisted it around, tried to shower Nicki with wealth, as if an ounce of it had ever made any sense to him! It was the perfect balance he had sought, and he and Lestat had worked, for a while, and the whole of life would have settled and Nicki might have clung on. 

Then Armand came, with his hordes. Through the windows, tearing down the curtains, taking the place apart as he stumbled drunkenly from corner to corner, only to be met with more ghouls of the cemetery who struck him to the ground. He had been drinking for a long time in his despair, and his blows and steps had been wild and uncoordinated under the anaesthetic of the wine he sought to help him forget Lestat, love, and life. 

There was the corner where they had taken him first, torn his coat off him and sank their fangs into his neck, his shoulder, his arms, pulling him into that first dizzying embrace of rapture, the pain of the bites not nearly as torturous as the pain of knowledge that he could never feel the weightless pleasure, guiltless, free, perfect, without the attendant sorrows and complications of thought that mortal pleasure held. They had not been gentle in their feeding, letting their fangs pierce as sharply and deeply as they could and without healing his skin afterwards, though they were quick, and the ecstasy he swam in flashed away so that reason kicked in as they released him the way a cat does when toying with a mouse. The momentary confusing agony, of wanting the rapture and fearing the bite, and scrambling to his feet, because they had not taken much to weaken him in that first draught, to knock them aside. 

They permitted him, laughing and shrieking their unholy sounds, and he had scrambled for the door, bleeding from the gashes in his neck and arms, but more blocked his way and pounced on him again. He was barely aware of his back hitting the floorboards because he was floating again, and it was the ultimate bliss. He half wanted them to hold him forever. He could not feel the aches or pains that plagued his mortal body, the throb that was developing in his abdomen from his drinking, he knew and hardly cared, the agony of not knowing where Lestat was, the despair of being left behind with the Marquise, who he knew Lestat loved as well. No, he was floating, he was in Heaven, and there was an order to it all, there was a meaning and a balance and an efficiency that settled all accounts, and Mozart was there and he tallied the injustices and elegantly pointed out, "look, M'sieur de Lenfent, you never suspected that this would pay for that, did you?" and his father was putting an arm around him at his mother's grave and he was weeping and he was saying that they would be well, that she would watch over them, that Nicolas and Etienne were not alone. But Lestat was there and he stretched out for him and his teeth were sharp and blood dripped from his mouth as he said, "Run, Nicki!"

And he had been released once more into pain and agony and terror, and his limbs felt weak and heavy as he tried to scramble to his feet. He was bruised from his earlier struggles, and the feeders were not kind when they pulled his arms, his neck, his legs, his torso to their sucking fanged mouths, their strong hands bruising his weak mortal flesh and accentuating the contrast between the bliss of the bite and the paradox of terror that predicted it. But his reason told him to bargain, though he had had nothing to bargain with for these shrieking creatures, to struggle, which had failed, and to flee, which he was now attempting, These creatures were beyond his understanding of good and evil. 

The Devil tempts, and temptation comes in many forms, but he was not tempted. He knew he wanted this as badly as anything else, the overwhelming bliss and weightlessness of the swoon. But every single instinct inside him told him to run, to get away from the only validation he had that yes, there was an order, for it was becoming clear that the only order was madness.

He saw the bust of Caesar and made for the bedroom, thinking to jump out the window, to call for help from the balcony. Stupidly he shoved himself beneath the bed, only to be dragged out again, screaming as his legs were bitten and he sank into the visions again. They were different this time, a dark cavern, and an auburn headed angel presiding above the pyre that set shadows against the wall, and his shadow cast an enormous image of a demon with horns and angel wings on the wall of the cave. "Bring him to me," intoned the angel to his unholy followers, and then he looked straight at Nicolas. He was beautiful and terrifying in the fear that he cast, and Nicolas wanted to say, "yes, I understand, for how else can justice be served?" But somewhere inside he told himself this too was a lie and the world he lived in an equal lie that could never be balanced, that the only way he could make sense of it was from the other side. And then the angel opened his mouth and it was full of fangs and Nicolas screamed. 

They choked off his cries, yanking him between each other like a rag doll, taking deep bites of his flesh wherever they could expose the skin. They had stopped the chase and they had him in his sitting room with the pianoforte and this they set him on, for he was too weak now to do more than kick light taps against the wood. 

Over and over they bit and withdrew, plunging him into bliss and joy, an erotic thrill twanging through him every time as if he were a puppet to be played, before pulling him out just as quickly back into pain and the world and himself. He moaned, dizzy, barely comprehensible, sobbing helplessly, writhing blindly against their grip, but they had taken too much blood. 

They pierced him through with their fangs and hoisted him up into the air. He felt sick and unbearably thirsty and the world was spinning, dipping in and out of pleasure and pain so quickly he no longer understood what they meant. And finally, like a blessing, they drained him until he lost consciousness, and he prayed that this would be the last time, that he would be allowed to rest, to depart, to die. 

But the trials in Les Innocents had yet to begin. There was still the entombment, the coffin, the Rites and the promises of Satan, that first private audience with Armand, the drainings and the pyre, then the cage, and he had thought he was in Hell until he realized he was not dead, and his suffering was merely a whimsical cog of a larger scheme, to draw out Lestat, of course, who else?

But when he returned here with Armand, his sanity already broken, his mind snapped without a means of mending or anyone intending to do so, balancing like a broken, twisted bicycle on one wheel, it was like trying to restore his mortal life. The surreal feeling of explaining his mortal motivations as if it were a different person had never passed from him, and even now he felt like a ghost in his own flat. Sometimes he thought if he touched something his hand would pass through it. He was in the museum of the folly of who he once was and it did not feel like home. Nothing did, not to the dead. 

"Armand thinks me mad," Nicolas continued, because Nino was staring at him in shock. Armand had told him of a lover that Nicki had lost, and had spoken of him like a man deceased. But Nicolas spoke as if he had been alive when he left, entrusted Nicki to their "care." "I have...I have episodes. I have musical fits when I cannot control myself and I am hardly aware. I may hurt myself, or others, Nicki." And Nino realized Nicolas was repeating whatever someone had drilled into him to say or to believe. 

"I'll care for you," Nino said. "You don't need them. Tell me what you need. They'll force you to their ends. I promise you I won't." Nicolas was unwell. Geniuses often were out of sync with the world, Nino told himself. Nicolas was not violent. He just couldn't control himself in his devotion to his work. He could call some of his uncle's servants to help. They would be glad of the work now that the house was being shuttered. The income could come from the theatre, Nicolas could work here undisturbed and never be chained to a chair again. 

Nicki looked at him as if he had performed some clever trick, and smiled. 

"I cannot go out in sunlight. Sometimes I am violently friendly to strangers. I go out to eat alone. I must be undisturbed in my sleep," Nicolas said, again as if he were reciting a nursery rhyme. Then he picked up his violin as if the matter was settled. In Nicki's mind, it was. Nino could do what he liked with Nicolas--it was a matter of whether Armand would permit it and whether Nicolas could stop the coven master. 

He brought the bow down on the strings, the full throated chords rippling from the instrument so richly that in an instant he was already lost and dissolved into the music. It slipped through the air and danced, and the dance was aimless and beautiful and languid, and the playing drew out Nicki's bowing with impossibly long notes that made Nino audibly groan to hear the tensed grace stretching his own soul as he listened. It crumbled into a frenzy of notes, quick pirouettes and dashes of passionate embrace, emotion being whipped up by a strong and whirling winter wind. Nino sat down on the divan, much more comfortable than Nicki's cot, and listened worshipfully as the melody transformed into something more playful and teasing. He realized Nicolas was smiling at him, and an irreverent idea flashed across his mind. 

As Nicki continued to play, the melody a teasing gavotte as if to encourage Nino the mortal crept forth and mouthed the front of Nicki's breeches. The tone of the music changed abruptly, notes of Arabic and Venetian music entering and twisting around them, becoming languorous and seductive. Nino felt his own excitement rising, keenly aware that Nicki was playing him just as much as the instrument. 

He unbuttoned and slipped off Nicki's breeches and underclothes, and took his cock into his mouth down to the hilt. He put his hands on Nicki's hips as he moved his head back and forth to the rhythm that Nicolas set to the music, the dual purpose making his own cock ache as Nicki drew out a note and trilled, Nino obediently lingering his lips around the head of his cock and tonguing the tip with swift, gentle strikes, before Nicolas turned back to the rhythm. Nino smiled around the shaft, hearing Nicki's gasp and small grunt as he shoved forward to let Nicki's cock hit the back of his throat and massaged it, swallowing around the tip. He stood up suddenly, ignoring the note of inquiry in the music, and drew Nicolas to the bed as slowly as possible without disturbing the music. He gently pushed him back, angling him so the bow would not crash into the bed, and was rewarded with the deep dark notes of lust that came from Nicki's violin. Nino was in love, with the violin, which he kissed reverently, with the music, which bathed them in Nicki's words and thoughts, and with Nicki, whom he straddled now and entered. There was a hitch in the music as Nicki's knees went up around his shoulders and Nino tried to thrust as smoothly as possible, but it was turning the music into a pizzicato and that would not do for Nino. He withdrew, his heart breaking at the sounds of mourning and disappointment coming from the violin, only to be rewarded by a screech of pleasure and joy, a full bursting celebration of life and song and what Nino recognized to be his melody, for often Nicolas injected it into what he was playing by way of greeting when Nino entered the room. He had grasped Nicki and sank down slowly on top of him, his anus closing and sealing tightly around Nicki's cock. It didn't disturb his playing and Nino relished the feeling of being filled, by Nicolas inside him and in his mind, buried and drowning in the music of their lovemaking. It was all embracing and it was rich with life and as he began to move up and down, groaning as he speared himself on Nicki repeatedly, he could not understand why the others insisted on talking to Nicolas when he spoke the most clearly through his violin. Through the smallest intimations of the notes, Nino could tell what pleased Nicki, was distracted him, and what made his body sing with pleasure and writhe like a cat. He marveled at this creature he could call a lover, this musical spirit made flesh. The melody took on a frenzied note and Nino grasped his own cock now, pumping it in time as he rose and fell with the music, being played and directed by Nicki again as the composer worked themselves into the climax of his song. 

Nino thought his world must have exploded, to have his climax accompanied by the song of his lover thrilling inside and around and through him, and his eyes were wide and open as he gasped, his body jerking with the lingering shocks of pleasure. He had remembered to shield the violin from his fluids, but now his hands were splayed as the violin was set on the bedside table and he was pulled forward for a searing kiss. It trailed down to his neck in a love bite and he yelled, unable to stop himself from coming a second time, his body jerking and spurting forward. His eyes were wide and his mind was blank but before they rolled up in his head from pleasure, he thought he saw Armand on the balcony, watching with a stormy look on his face.

When he awoke in the morning, sunlight streamed in through the windows and the apartment was seemingly empty. Nicki's violin was put away in its case, and he had written a note in his fine, intelligent hand. It thanked him for the opportunity of the recital last night--Nino chuckled--and begged leave to retire for the day, as sunlight does not agree with a musician's constitution. Nino was free to go as he wished. There were spare keys to the flat in Nino's violin case and Nicolas would be here in the evening. 

He stretched luxuriously, naked in the flat, afternoon sunlight pouring happily in through the windows. He thought the first thing to do would be to contact Roget, the attorney for Renaud's House of Thespians. Surely he would know of the house and of Nicolas' disposition, including whether Armand and the theatre truly had legal care of him. 

Roget seemed surprised by the inquiry. Nicolas de Lenfent had lost his reason years ago, but he was faring well at the next iteration of Renaud's. As far as Roget knew, Nicolas was his own person. He was doubtful that anyone could control the young man. He was intelligent and strong-willed, and before he had lost his reason, his loyalty and devotion to Lestat showed no boundaries. He had visited and sat with the Marquise the entire time she was here, neglecting his own care and entertaining her with discussions of philosophy, playing his violin, and reading her books at her bedside. He had asked Roget endlessly where Lestat was, even as Roget delivered him gifts and the keys to the house on the Ile St Louis, at first fearful of his safety, then--as the gifts and silence grew despite Roget's entreaties to Lestat to contact his old friend whom he was alienating--resentful and angry. And as the drinking worsened, he grew delusional. Young foolish lovers, the pair of them--tragic, no?

Accusations of Armand de Romanus' hold over M. de Lenfent in some way were ludicrous. The youth was wise beyond his years, and Lestat would not have given him directorship of the theatre (for title to the property belonged to Eleni de Louvois) if he did not have the utmost trust in him. He was the one who calmed Nicolas down when he occasionally visited Roget in the dead of night with threats and incoherent ravings. He was the one who quieted the violinist's disturbed mind and led him away. The only person who was a danger to Nicolas de Lenfent was himself, as far as Roget was concerned, and M. de Rochambeau must have been mistaken in what he had witnessed that evening.

Nino waited until the performance began to go backstage and retrieve his things and some of Nicki's papers. Few were about, and the others had grown accustomed to him coming and going.

"Leaving us, Nino?" Armand asked, stopping him in the hallway as he nearly reached the door. 

"I thought you were at the performance--I'm taking some things to Nicki," Nino said firmly. Surely he imagined Armand outside last night, for no one could have climbed the distance up to the small Juliet balcony.

"Nicolas is directing tonight's performance. I had Felix fetch him from his house," Armand said neutrally. "And I do not attend every night."

Nino returned his neutral gaze, but he drew his bundle tighter and shifted it to one arm. 

"Nicki and I are staying at his house from now on," he announced to Armand. "It will be a better change of scenery for him."

"Too much change is confusing for him," Armand intoned, and it sounded like it was part of last night's litany of requirements Nicolas had recited. "He will be safer here with us."

"You're not fooling anyone. I don't know why the others are too afraid to speak up, but I won't let you take advantage of him any longer. I'll be back after the performance for him. Good evening, m'sieur," Nino said, and brushed past him, resisting the urge to look back. 

He had half expected the house to be a shambles, Nicolas taken against his will, but when he lit the candles it was as he had left it. Nicki had taken his violin case with him, but his coat was still there and it was as if he had merely stepped out for a moment. Nino spent the rest of the evening sorting the papers he had brought, and clearing a space on the desk so Nicki could work. He did not yet hang up his clothes, but he looked curiously through the armoire and the drawers. He found a large empty traveling trunk in a windowless storage room, and thought perhaps he and Nicolas could make a trip out of Paris to the countryside, where it might be safe for the time being.

Nicolas was in good spirits when Nino returned to the theatre, and he embraced him openly before the rest of the company. He was wearing dark green and it suited his brown curly hair, which had been tied back with a black silk ribbon.

"Did you eat yet?" he asked, and when Nino shook his head, Nicki said, "Then we'll go out before we go home."

"Really?" Nino asked eagerly as Nicki shoved him out the door, glancing hastily behind them. "But we've never--"

"We're getting out of here. Too many layers," Nicki said, and tugged them down the street, past bridges and into a tavern. It was filled with students their age, and when they shoved onto a table elbow to elbow with some youths from the Sorbonne, Nino recalled that Nicolas had also attended, and read law there for a time.

Nino called for bread and some soup and Nicolas called for wine and momentarily the theatre was forgotten. They grinned at each other, argued with their fellows about art and philosophy and girls, and bantered and insulted until Nino was quite drunk. Nicki's eyes glowed as they watched him, and he put an arm around his waist.

"Hey, we're going to Marc's place, do you want to come?" someone offered, and they stumbled out into the winter night. It was snowing, and they crowded together, shivering as they walked and wandered, running and whooping and drunkenly crashing off lamp posts and walls.

"Pour la Revolucion!" one of their young friends sang, only to get his hat knocked off by another. 

"You think this is going to change anything?" He sneered. "You think Danton and Robespierre have anything but blood--"

"This is just the beginning," Nicolas said gravely, one hand suddenly on the protestor's shoulder. 

"What?" The man frowned in confusion.

"The world is changed by blood. All the great revolutions in history, the transformations of our time, are drenched in blood," Nicolas said, and his smile was sinister. The others laughed nervously, but the man he was addressing did not laugh. He had seen the fangs. "There is a secret balance to the world, M'sieur, some of us never even get to see it. The cogs turn, the blood flows, like a natural pressure system. The monarch pushes from the top and the peasants cannot help but rise up, and it comes out in nothing but blood. There is no other way for change, and all the tallies are made in screams and violence."

"There's something wrong with you," the man said, shoving Nicolas away, but he was merely a mortal and could not budge the vampire.

"You don't believe me? Think of the darkest things you were told not to imagine as a child. The things you call yourself a fool to think of in the darkest hours of the night. You invite them into this world, do you know?" Nicolas was getting louder, and some of the students were leaving. It was just the angry young man, Nino, and Nicolas now. The others had left for Marc's party and the promise of free wine. "The ghouls, the vampires, the unholy horrors, they come when they are called and they dwell in your lover, your ruler, your lord, your master, your father, your wife. They come for you from the cemeteries in the night, and they make you one of them."

"What the hell--?"

"Nicki, what are you doing?" Nino asked, alarmed.

"And you know what? Life is so short, so bitter, isn't it safer and saner to join the legions of blood? You accuse Danton, you accuse Robespierre, their love affair with Madame Guillotine is the only natural response to this world!" Nicolas declared, laughing low and terrible. "Slowly you're all led to the slaughter anyway! Why not sooner than later?"

"Leave me alone!" the man said, turning to run, and Nicki was about to reach for him when Nino dragged him bodily backwards by reaching his arms around his waist. 

"You're frightening me," Nino said. "What was all that?"

"The truth," Nicolas said, and he had a wild look in his eyes. "Don't you see? There's a secret skin beneath this world and everyone must be made to see! There is nothing but blood waiting in the streets!" He took off at a run and slammed into the man from behind, knocking him to the ground. The man screamed, and Nino pulled Nicolas off of him as hard as he could. There was blood running down the man's neck and Nicolas looked confused, drunk.

"Run, goddamnit, run!" Nino shouted at the man. Nicolas twitched alert at the sound of retreating footsteps, and blinked when Nino blocked his path. "Nicki, what the hell--" Blood was dripping from Nicki's mouth. He smiled, and lunged for Nino. "Nicki! What are you--Jesus Mary it's me, it's Nino!" But Nicolas seemed not to have heard, and Nino scrambled backwards as his lover approached. He shifted to his feet and grabbed a loose paving stone, flinging it at Nicki. It struck him in the left shoulder, causing an unholy howl of pain to rise, and he staggered back but did not stop advancing even though his shoulder looked dislocated. 

Nino bolted. On pure instinct he ran, and he could hear Nicolas' staggering steps behind. His eyes spotted another loose stone and he flung it blindly behind him. He heard a grunt, but he didn't stop running, his chest heaving and the winter air burning in his lungs, until he reached the theatre.

"Armand! Armand," Nino gasped, slamming through the door and hurtling down the hallway. His lover had just attacked someone had tried to...he didn't understand. "Armand, help!" He banged on Armand's door and staggered in.

"Where is Nicki?" Armand asked urgently as he rose from his desk, taking in Nino's appearance and understanding at once.

"Street...attacked us," Nino panted, pointing in the direction he ran from.

"Take me there," Armand said without hesitation, and Felix tailed them without being told.

When they found Nicki, he was bleeding from a gash in the head, staggering against buildings and pausing to stare at the ground every so often, as if he couldn't understand why his feet touched the paving stones at all. His erratic movements could be seen from afar by any infrequent passerby, who all gave him a wide berth when they saw the blood he trailed in the snow behind him.

Nino hid behind Armand despite himself, because he could not comprehend what his eyes were seeing. Who was this creature who looked like his Nicolas?

"Take Nino aside," Armand whispered, keeping his eyes on Nicolas,who had not noticed them yet. Felix gently pulled Nino behind a nearby building, and they peered around the corner. 

"Nicki?" Armand asked solicitously, and Nino was surprised by how gentle he sounded. Nicki looked up, startled, and collapsed heavily against the nearest brick wall. He shoved a hand roughly across and up his face, unknowingly smearing blood over his forehead. He sank down into the snow, knees drawn close to his chest. "Is it better?"

"No," Nicki said, his voice choked. He closed his eyes and looked like he was trying to press them out with the palms of his hands. "I'm not really here. I'm...It's wrong, I told you, I can't..."

"Focus on this answer. Did you hurt anyone?" Armand asked, his voice hardening into command and making even Nino want to stand at attention. He was approaching Nicolas ever so slowly.

"There...someone was talking about blood. We were talking and I wanted to tell him...His neck, I...Nino pushed him. Mon Dieu, Nino, I frightened him, Armand, I frightened him," Nicki said, babbling now.

"Yes," Armand said testily, and he put a hand on Nicki's bowed head. "But who else? Think, now."

"No, no, no, no need to ask, no one. There was a girl but she saw me and ran and I wanted Nino, I wanted him, just him," Nicki said despairingly, allowing Armand to pull him standing. He hissed softly as Armand pulled his shoulder back into its socket, and rotated it to test it.

"I am here. It will be safe at the theatre. We'll clean you up and I can take you out," Armand said, relishing the way Nicki melted under his touch, and sank into his arms. He needed Armand, and if he didn't, Armand would make certain otherwise.

"I frightened him," Nicki lamented softly, letting Armand embrace him and grant him soft kisses across his face. He licked the blood from his forehead as if he were grooming a cat, teased a kiss from Nicki's lips, and then kissed the tears from Nicki's eyes.

"You were excited," Armand said soothingly. "I will fix it at the theatre. Play for me when we return. It will calm you."

"Yes, yes," Nicki said, the distress fading from his expression as Armand's words lulled him. "But Armand, Nino ran away! He fled from me!"

"I'm here," Nino piped up, but he remained at a distance, looking around the corner. "I went to find Armand."

"Why him? Why not Eleni, or the gendarmes?" Nicolas demanded, voice suddenly sharp, his expression darkening. He shoved Armand away from him suddenly. "You knew this would happen. I thought it strange, being allowed out to a tavern! You hoped it would set me off!"

"You wanted the freedom," Armand said placidly, letting Nicolas tie his own noose.

"I went to him because you nearly tore someone's throat out and you looked like you were going to do the same to me," Nino explained. "You want to know what Armand's been saying to me? He's been offering me safety if I ever feel threatened by you! That's why I went to him tonight!"

Nicolas looked like he'd been slapped. 

"I didn't...I didn't mean..." he fumbled for the words, looking lost in the middle of the street. He stepped towards Nino and looked devastated when the mortal backed away. His expression clouded over. 

"We are returning to the theatre now," Armand said firmly, and he reached an arm around Nicki's shoulders. It was not refused. Nicolas let Armand guide him back, as he tried to go over what had transpired in his mind and make sense of the madness.

"Come," Felix said to Nino. "Armand will care for him. The others are going to a party tonight. Care to join us? Or have you had enough of parties?"

"I should look after... Nino began to say, then trailed off as Nicolas suddenly gripped his head in a frenzy, only to have Armand patiently pull his arms down and forcefully push him along, at a faster speed now. The snow was falling heavier in greater flakes and he shivered.

"You won't be allowed near Nicki tonight. Best come with us. He'll be better tomorrow, I'm sure. Armand will fix it," Felix said, in what passed in him for kindness.

The next evening, Nicki was shut in his room with Armand. They were talking, or rather, Nicki was shouting and seething while Nino strained to hear whether Armand gave any response at all. He still couldn't understand. What manner of condition did Nicki have? What was wrong with him and how could such sublime music pour from such ferocity?

The door was suddenly flung open and Nicolas pulled Nino by the lapels of his coat into the room. Armand was standing up, his face its usual immovable surface, but his hands were clenched and his stance defensive. He was dressed in black but in finer clothes than usual, his suit picked out in gold and scarlet thread. Nicki was wild-eyed and excited, and he shook Nino companionably.

"For the good of the theatre!" he declared to Nino excitedly, and then looked at Armand. He stabbed his finger down at the freshly written pages on the desk. "You want me to go to the Actor's Guild with this? It is our execution they cannot imitate--any fool can foist Moliere upon a danse macabre and call it art. This stupid soiree won't even read the play."

"It is an event that will assist the permanence of this establishment," Armand said patiently and solemnly, but Nino could tell his patience was wearing thin.

"Our permanence will assist the permanence of this establishment," Nicolas sneered. "What if I refuse?"

Nino tensed.

"I do not need your consent. Merely the completion of the piece for tonight's submission," Armand told him. "You have the final scene and then we can depart."

"They're just going to stuff it in some folio and wait for our money," replied Nicolas, but he let Armand shove him into his seat and put a quill in his hand. While Nicolas wrote begrudgingly, Armand picked up a brush and pulled Nicki's hair back with lightning quick strokes before tying it in a black silk ribbon. Nicki paid him no mind, closing his eyes but briefly as Armand went over his face with a washcloth.

"Be that as it may, my frenetic fabulist," Armand said as Nicolas shoved the last few completed pages at him. He gathered them up and tied a string around the bundle, then stuffed it into a pouch so quickly Nino barely saw the blur of movement. "Can you be trusted to dress yourself?"

"Haah," Nicolas said, standing up with a scowl and going to his armoire. "Only if Nino comes with us."

Armand shot Nino a quick look of inspection.

"This is a welcoming soiree for the theater company's admission into the actor's guild, the Parisian Guild of Performing Artists," Armand told him. "Do you have formal attire?" Nino nodded. "Put it on. Now. We leave in ten minutes."

Nino scrambled to the bundle he had brought back from Nicki's flat, now that he was uncertain whether they could stay there after all. 

"I can help you with that," Nicolas said, his voice low as he appeared behind Nino to unlace his shirt and pull it off of him. "Unless you are still afraid of me?"

"Nicki!" Nino gasped, and dashed a quick look of alarm at Armand. "We're not alone!"

"Armand can watch," Nicolas said scathingly, and Nino caught a quick flash of pure hatred pass over Armand's face before it dissolved back into that same toneless calm. "He likes to keep violinists safe, isn't that true? Or is it too much for your jealousy to contain?"

"Are you going to get dressed?" Armand asked, almost sounding testy. He reached into Nicki's armoire to throw clothes at the irate composer. Nicki caught them, and flung them back at Armand's chest.

"Forgive me, I lost myself, I would never mean you harm," Nicolas said to Nino, cupping his cheek with one hand and kissing him softly. "Forgive me."

"You. . .you frightened me, is all," Nino said, hesitant. "I love you! I couldn't stand it, seeing you like that and not being able to reach you. Please, I don't want to be left behind. I don't want you to be alone." At that Nicolas nearly choked, and he grasped Nino's hair and kissed him tightly.

"That's enough," Armand said brusquely, pulling them apart. "Pardonez-moi, but we do have an engagement. Nino, get dressed. Unfortunately, Nicki's presence is required at this event." He gave Nino a slight push away and whipped Nicolas' shirt off of him, eliciting a snarl from the vampire. Nicki shoved Armand up against the wall, only to be pushed down onto the bed. Armand knelt on his chest and held his kicking legs still while he shoved on new breeches and socks, but lost his balance when Nicki heaved and tilted the cot so they both fell to the floor. 

"My presence is exactly where I want it to be!" Nicki declared, straddling Armand's chest and gripping his lapels while Nino watched, transfixed and uncertain.

"And yet you do nothing," Armand replied mockingly, in a rare moment of discomposure, his eyes ablaze. 

"Oh shut up," Nicki said, sounding disgusted, and sealed Armand's mouth with a kiss. It seemed Nino's heart stopped for a moment, and he forgot to breathe, his legs unsteady as he saw Nicki's naked chest lower itself on top of Armand's, the two of them sliding against one another, groping and kissing breathlessly and with a furious hunger, as if they were trying to devour one another. Nicki's skin paled abruptly and he melted against Armand with a soft moan, the theatre owner gripping his wrists now and holding the composer up above him. With heat rising to his face, Nino shoved on his formal clothes, but he couldn't understand why Nicki would do this to him.

Suddenly Armand twisted, and flipped Nicolas face first onto the floor with one arm twisted behind his back. The composer looked nonplussed yet limp, his eyes half-lidded and his breathing steady through his parted lips. Armand was flushed and breathing a little hard.

"I don't have time for this," Armand muttered, shoving a shirt on the now docile composer and standing him up. Nicolas looked like he'd been drugged, and he stared down at Armand while he was quickly dressed in a deep red frock coat and his cravat was adjusted. "Nicolas, Nino. Come." He strode out of the room, expecting them to follow him to the coach.

"What the fuck?!" Nino hissed at Nicolas, his eyes filled with tears. Nicolas frowned slightly, as if he were trying to wake up and hear Nino clearly. 

"The coaches are here," Laurent was announcing through the hall. "Nino, Nicki, you're still here? You're riding in Armand and Eleni's coach. Come now, everyone!" He walked off through the hall, trying to round up the rest of the members who were due to attend.

"You're driving me mad," Nino burst out, and ran for the coach. Nicki followed, but he leaned one elbow on the edge of the window in the coach, watching the street languidly. He appeared utterly calm...lifeless. Armand must have sedated him somehow, Nino reasoned, and quickly, for the transformation was instant.

"Thank you for coming, Nicki," Eleni was saying as she sat across from him in the coach. Nino mustered the energy to glower at Armand who was across the way from him, but as always the theatre owner was inscrutable. "I know it has been hard for you lately."

"Mmm," Nicolas said noncommittally, with a faint smile on his face. He shook his head as if to try to clear it, and Nino couldn't understand how moments ago, this was the same lover who mocked Armand ceaselessly and spoke to Nino of forgiveness as if it were the only thing that could save him. 

"You understand what we are trying to do tonight, oui?" Eleni asked him, looking embarrassed to be speaking to him like a simpleton.

Nicolas gave a sigh and then looked directly at her, his gaze unfocused but steady. "A few representatives from the theatre are to attend the welcoming soiree into the actor's guild. For some reason my attendance is necessary for this," Nicki said, his voice well-spoken but his manner languid, and again Nino had the distinct impression that he had been drugged. Had he missed something that had passed between Armand and Nicolas on the floor of the dressing room?

"You are very important to us all, Nicki," Eleni said, and to her credit did not elbow Armand for agreement. "And everyone wants to meet the composer who has written such marvelous works for our performances."

"I told Armand it was our execution that added the novelty and the value to the boulevard and little else," Nicolas told her slowly.

"But the music--" Eleni protested.

"The music is water. The music is. . .the music. . ." Nicolas paused, his voice tired and breaking, and looked at Nino while he tried to think of the words. "It is good that Nino is here tonight. He can explain about the music. All I say are notes."

Their conversation was cut off when the coach arrived, and they were announced into a hall with white paneled wood and mirrors reflecting chandelier upon chandelier of light. There was a bustle of sound and chatter, and they quickly dispersed into the crowd after being greeted by the head of the guild and announced. Nino realized that wherever Armand went, a small system of politicking individuals orbited, financial interests, politicians, lawyers, theatre owners, actors, writers, for it seemed Armand knew many people. He felt determined to get as drunk as he could, because otherwise he thought he might make a scene if Armand tried to talk to him. He could not trust himself with Nicolas at all.

Nicolas was in a daze anyway, wandering from place to place looking at people as if they were curiosities in a glass jar. Those who managed to capture his attention with a question or conversation usually soon walked away with a confused and unsettled expression on their faces. It was only a matter of time before Eleni noticed, and presently Nicolas was accompanied by Laurent as he toured the room.

"Are you well, Nicki?" Laurent asked solicitously.

"As well as I ever am, when we walk in mortal halls beneath mortal lights and pretend we are not wolves," Nicolas said a little too loudly. "Are you still dazzled?"

"Only a little," Laurent confessed honestly, and linked arms with him. "Please, Nicki, it is an important night for us to pass, and to pass well. Can you show me what a gentleman of this era would do to make conversation?"

"Ideally he would find someone who would be willing to lift her panniers behind a rosebush," Nicolas muttered, reaching for a wineglass and staring into its contents. He sniffed it and frowned. "But those were the days. Actually, those could still be the days. I'm hungry."

"Polite conversation, Nicki!" Laurent said.

"Could you lift your panniers for me, /please/?" Nicki said under his breath, and snorted in laughter, drawing stares.

"You are not fulfilling your thirst here," Laurent warned him. "Not behind rosebushes, not on the dance floor, not anywhere."

"Yes yes," Nicolas said wearily, and then suddenly pulled him along. "Ah, M'sieur Lord Mayor. It's my shame to introduce myself and my associate. This is Laurent de Moreau. I am unfortunately Nicolas de Lenfent. We are with Renaud's."

"Ah, then congratulations are in order for you tonight on your acceptance into the guild. Your success has been, ah, meteoric," said the lord mayor with a strained smile.

"Is my lord mayor fond of the stars, sire?" Nicolas asked.

"Why yes, I am!" replied he in surprise. "Have you ever done any shows about stars or the planetary bodies?"

"Not yet, sire," Nicolas answered dutifully with a slight bow.

"Well you should! Science is the future," the lord mayor said. "Hmm? What?" He leaned in as an aide whispered in his ear. "Oh! I am speaking to the right fellow, I see! You are the playwright and composer? Where do you get your ideas?"

A dark look passed over Nicolas' face but was gone and quickly replaced by the bright and eager look he spread over his face earlier in greeting, like a young student full of energy.

"One cannot replace the wisdom of the Classics," he intoned dutifully. "The Greek tragedians and comedians, their distilled essences ring truth for any tier of audience and humble and elevate the highest and lowest of man."

"Yes, the great equalizer," the Lord Mayor said, nodding approvingly. 

"And the people, my lord, of course," Nicolas added. "They scream raucously for blood. The great equalizer, as you say. Blood of fine vintage, blood of kings and princes so they might partake of its rarity, so one might be joined in its great tide. One can only hope that stage blood will be enough for them for now."

"My word," the lord mayor said, taken aback by Nicki's unfriendly smile and bright manner that belied his menacing words. "You do a little acting yourself then? Sounds like one of your plays."

"He is very devoted to his work," Laurent assured him, giving Nicki a warning squeeze on the arm. Fortunately someone else begged audience and they bowed and bid their farewells politely and all was well. 

"Did you talk like that to people when you were a mortal?" Laurent asked Nicki in a hushed voice. "That was the lord mayor of all of Paris! He could have ordered the theatre closed if he wanted!"

"What is it to me?" Nicolas asked, shrugging. "We can kill him in his sleep. We can threaten his family. What are they but cattle and playthings now? Bare bones knocking around, storing blood for later?"

"We do not have the same temporal latitude they do," Laurent insisted, eyes watchful and pulling them out onto the open terrace in the garden, so they might not be heard. 

"They do not know where we sleep," Nicolas said dismissively. 

"You sleep at the theatre," Laurent pointed out. "You spend most of your time there."

"Did you think Armand would permit otherwise?" Nicolas asked with one eyebrow raised. He leaned his elbows on the stone balustrade to look out over the garden. He nodded his chin over towards the distant couple that thought themselves concealed. "At least someone is having fun."

Laurent narrowed his eyes and then suddenly stiffened. "Let us return. No doubt the heads of the other theatres and some of their writers will want to talk to you."

"What is it? What did you see?" Nicolas asked, resisting Laurent's efforts to drag him inside. Then he recognized the figures in the bushes and his eyes widened. 

"Nino..."

"Nicki, don't--"

"Let go of me--"

"We'll deal with him back at the theatre--"

"Like hell!" Nicolas shoved Laurent at last away from him and leapt from the balustrade, landing at a full sprint in the garden. He reached the lovers in no time, strangling the scream in the girl's throat by gashing her neck open violently, feeding hungrily from the blood that fountained from the wound. 

When no more could be drunk, sated, he blinked muzzily over her carcass and turned to look at Nino as the fog cleared. They were partially hidden by a copse of rose bushes. Laurent would have retrieved the others by now, formulated a plan. 

Nino was staring at him, shocked, frozen with terror and horror, but he whispered, "Vampire!"

Nicolas nodded, and realization dawned on Nino's face, then confusion. "But Armand..."

"My keeper. All of them. They drove me mad, they say, before I was turned, you see," Nicolas said in a low chuckle. "They didn't realize how much trouble it would cause!"

"I'm sorry," Nino breathed, but he was trembling as if he knew what would happen. "I was angry. I thought you were cheating on me with Armand."

"I am sorry," Nicolas confessed. "I don't want to die. And he loves me, in his queer way."

"He abuses you--"

"If not for him I would not survive," Nicolas said shortly. 

"Then you had no right to be jealous of Christine," Nino said. 

"Is that her name?" Nicki asked, shoving her corpse to the ground and taking her place on the stone bench. 

"What kind of thing are you?" Nino asked, springing away from him, his hands outstretched in questioning, his eyes wide and wild. "Is the music some sick accident?" He laughed in astonishment and Nicolas stared at him. "How can you create such sublime notes? What are you?"

"I told you--"

"No, no, no, mon cher," Nino chided, his finger shaking as it wagged at Nicki, desperation and delirium edging into his voice. "Armand, he is a vampire. Brutal, manipulative, beautiful. I feel danger coming from him even when all he does is sit there. You...are a seductive, repulsive marvel. You create beautiful music but then you spout drivel and desecrate the dead and attack me when all I've ever done is worship you! You are but a travesty. Help me understand, I beg you. What do you want from me?"

"I just want you," Nicki said, his eyes wide as he rose, arms outstretched. Nino looked repulsed, took a step back from the bloodied hands, then fell into Nicki's embrace. Instantly he stiffened and tried to shove against him. The pain of Nicki's bite was pushing through all pleasure, and now that he was conscious of it, he felt it all the more keenly. 

Nicki pulled him all the closer, cleaving him to his chest, and drained more blood from him, his soul feeding inwards. The swoon overcame Nino, his sensations afloat, but Nicolas released him on the soft grass. He groaned and sobbed softly as the pain returned and the terror and confusion, for he had seen Nicki's inner soul and it was no less bleak or empty or hopeless than when Lestat saw it, and it had all the room in the world to swallow up Nino and Armand and everyone else with it. 

But then the Blood was in his mouth and it was the headiest of wines and he drank and sucked hard on that fount, and he opened his eyes and Nicki was looking at him with a pained smile of so much love his heart was bursting and he was drinking from his wrist and he realized they were two together on that lonely endless shore, that they weren't being swallowed, and Nino could pick out every single facet on every single grain and hear it sing, and Nicki could be with Nino forever, in so many flavors of darkness and music as they saw fit, if only Nino would listen.

Then the sands were no more, and suddenly Nino could hear nothing at all. Hard hands were on his shoulders yanking him backwards and he saw Nicki's furious expression as he was gagged and dragged to where Nino could not see. Theatre members took hold of every limb and moved him so quickly the air hurt as it shifted past his now sensitive skin. 

He tried to cry out, but a hand muffled his mouth, and the world tilted. He could hear too much, smell too much, feel too much. His clothing felt insubstantial and he half-heartedly struggled against his captors because he was too distracted by all the sensations surrounding him, and then it was too much, and he swooned.

Then someone was smoothing his hair, touching his face, and it was so gentle, like silk against silk, to be touched this way by cool hands, and he opened his eyes and he was lying on the floor in a stone cell. He could see the fine details of the stones around him and smell the tallow on the flickering candles in the wall. And there was a sublime creature with russet brown hair, soulful dark eyes, and the finely made features of a boy just entering manhood. He wanted to kiss this angel who was caressing him, run his fingers through the waves that seemed fine as cornsilk, and see how soft the cupid's bow mouth was. And then the details came into clearer resolution and he realized who he was looking at. It was Armand. 

"What happened?" he asked, rising on his elbows. Armand was crouched over him, and he shifted back solicitously so they could remain face to face. It felt strange to see him lower himself like this, even if it was merely in elevation. 

"What's the last thing you remember?" Armand asked, and the smooth tones of his voice were like music to Nino's ears, and he understood how Nicki could be so overwhelmed, even though it had not completely sunk in why he should make the comparison.

"You are so beautiful," Nino whispered in a daze, afraid to hear his own voice again. 

It was not the answer Armand wanted to hear, because he bowed his head to conceal a rueful smile. It was the first thing that Nicki had said as a mortal to him, even in the terror of Les Innocents. Then he looked up again and Nino wanted to weep at the sternness on his face. 

"Nicolas has committed a severe offense upon your person tonight," he informed Nino. "He has made you one of us, a vampire."

"I know," Nino said, and he had not expected Armand to be surprised. "I want to see him, please."

"Nicolas cannot care for himself alone," Armand said patiently. "And he cannot be trusted to explain our ways to you because we suffer him to break our rules so often out of the affection we bear him."

"I'll do what you want, please, just let me see him first!" Nino said, but there was a thinness, a strain wearing at him, and he was certain Armand could detect it. 

"You thirst," he observed. "And you must be taught our rules that we hold dear so we might survive in such multitudes in this city. Nicki can wait. Will you comply or no?"

"Will you tell me where he is? Or how he is?" Nino asked, and he gasped at the feel of his hands against the stone and the cloth against his skin as he stood. 

"You needn't worry. We protect him," Armand said. "It is forbidden to kill one of our kind, no matter what he says, and one of our oldest sacrileges. Can you imagine destroying centuries of intelligence and experience?"

"Mon Dieu..." Nino said, unable to stop his mouth from twisting in a rictus of horror at the thought. He raised his hands to his mouth as if to weep and found no tears. "How old is he? How old are you?"

"In time," Armand said, looking at him appraisingly. He placed a comforting arm around the frightened boy. "Come. I'll take you on the hunt. In time you will learn to be more artful but for now, you are newborn and you thirst. We would not want you to suffer that."

"I hear everything," Nino said, mouth contorted in horror. "I hear the air and the stone and the ground above us, the carriages outside and...Nicolas, screaming. It's muffled but he is so angry...there is so much pain. Why is he screaming?

Armand frowned. He did not hear Nicki screaming, though with how angry he was at being separated from his fledgling, that would not have been surprising. They had kept the gag on after they returned from the coverup at the soiree, just to remind him of his limits.

"Come," he said, after a pause. "Let us feed. Then I can take you to Nicki."

He told him the rules as they walked, but Nino was transfixed by everything he heard, and Armand had to interrupt him, puzzled about what he meant when he heard the stones and the air and the light. Was this another mad one? He had thought, hoped, rather, that though Nino was an unfortunate accident they had not predicted Nicki would execute, it was a stroke of luck that they might have another immortal composer on staff. Nino was bright and eager and a bit naive, but he had a sense for music almost as much as Nicki did, though perhaps not with as much commercial breadth and flexibility. But what use was he if he heard music in everything? Could he write any of it down for the boulevard?

Eleni stopped them in the hall before they went out, to let them know that Nicki was asleep now, and would Nino like to see him?

Before any of them could react, Nino darted past her and into Nicki's dressing room. He stopped before Nicki's bed, tears of blood running down his cheeks. 

His lover was beautiful before, but now with Nino's new vision, he looked impossible. Delicately featured but strong-limbed to mortals, Nicolas now appeared to be infinitely fragile to immortal eyes. He could understand why they would want to protect him, despite his transgressions. This imitation of a young man, a brittle statue disturbed so many times it seemed the next tap might expose all the hidden lines of fracture and cleavage. And yet Nino thought he could hear more life and passion in him than the dull pounding if anything else around him, that low seductive melody of the mandolin or the lute from Armand with the fiery undertones of a balalaika incomparable to the thundering and throbbing symphony of violin and pianoforte coming from Nicki, and that was it, he could not see Nicolas anymore, not any of the details. The boyish dark curls and sculpted lips begging to be kissed all seemed no longer pinpoints for Nino's lust to focus on. Instead they formed part of that greater harmony of this creature before him from whom poured a symphony of sounds. And he could see them!

"I can hear his music!" Nino gasped. "I can see it waiting inside." 

Behind him, Eleni and Armand exchanged concerned glances. One mad vampire was enough to handle but two? 

"Let him rest. Bestowing the Dark Gift is very taxing," Armand said softly, and tapped Nino on the shoulder to beckon him to follow. Transfixed, as of hearing him rather than seeing or feeling the instruction, Nino turned and followed. 

"I can hear the sun," Nino murmured as they sought out their prey. 

"It's getting late," Armand agreed. "Come." He led them to beneath a bridge, where beggars sought shelter from the rain. No time for the long delicious seduction in a carriage or silk bed, a closeted room in a garden house, a copse at a hunting party. This would do for the most basic of lessons. Kill away from where you sleep. Do not be seen. Do not leave a mess. Have respect for that which sustains you. Nicki cared for none of these things. Armand was never certain if it was from inability or lack of effort.

"She is a rondelet," Nino hummed, to Armand's confusion, as they neared, and he realized there was a beggar woman there. "She sounds beautiful..." And Armand knew the Thirst was driving him now, the tautness in his neck and veins obvious as he craned to look at her as she snuffled in her blankets, grey and sullen and alone. Nino took a step back, but Armand nudged him forward. 

"Take her. Light is coming, and it will kill you and burn you to a cinder so quickly, you're that young," Armand said. "Drink from her. You have your fangs. You have your instincts."

Nino made to back away, that rictus of horror passing over his features that was beginning to look familiar, and Armand grabbed him and shoved him face first at the woman's neck. She yelled, startled, and gasped in delight when Nino began to feed as Armand knew he would. He tore them apart as she died, and waited patiently as Nino gasped at the air, waiting for him to come to his senses. But he did not. He kept gasping, heaving empty tearless sobs as he stared at her cooling body lying serenely amidst the rags as if she had perished from exposure.

"How could I have killed her?" Nino begged, letting Armand drag him from his knees. 

"Because she and all her kind are your prey now, but cunning and surprising and overrunning the world," Armand said, if a trifle testily.

Nino was quiet on the way back to the theatre, but Armand sensed the unease and the guilt growing in him. It would mellow with time, he thought. He was so young, and sensitive. Too artistic. It made Armand feel at once protective and vulnerable for it.

"How could I do it?" Nino was still asking himself, shaking his head.

"You are still thinking the old mortal thoughts that no longer apply to you," Armand pointed out, letting them back into the theatre. It was largely deserted, most of the members having gone home for the day to their own secret sleeping places. Nicolas drowsed by the door with his back against the wall, one knee drawn up to his chest, letting the oncoming day close him down. He had been waiting for them.

He blinked sleepily when Nino and Armand appeared, and Armand ached to see his wistful smile, off-guard and possible only in such moments. 

"Mon cher, you turned out beautifully," Nicki said to Nino, eyes half-lidded. He almost looked content. He was still dressed in the evening's attire but someone had loosened his cravat for him, and his hair must have come undone in his struggles. He looked like an untidy broken doll that needed to be put back together. 

"I can hear everything," Nino intoned frantically, but his panic had not yet roused Nicki. "Nicki, I can hear the music of the stars and of the sun, and O Nicki, I can't, I can't, what have you done?"

"What is it?" Nicki asked, confused, and how Armand locked the pity up tight in his heart. 

"I killed her, how could I? How could I do it? I silenced her!" Nino said, distraught, and drowsily Nicki reached up, trying to rise through layers of sleep to comfort him.

"You are..." he paused and giggled, then shook his head. "The Ultimate Fermata!" he declared.

Nino stared at him, and the horror passed over his face again. "You think this is a comedy?" he demanded. "I do not want it! I wanted the music to go on and on! I do not want this! I don't want to end this...it was torture, to hear that heartbeat and to know I was the end of it! I cannot do it!"

"They do not matter," Nicki replied, puzzled and unsettled. He looked to Armand but the coven master had no words for their strange argument. "They're barely there anyway, and they're gone so quickly."

"No," Nino said sadly, and he smiled at Nicki. He embraced his maker, who returned his soft kisses with a tender love that made Armand's chest ache and his heart seem to swell in pain of jealousy and longing and anger. "No, I can hear too much. You gave me the music, yes, but now I can hear the sun!"

"Nino?" Nicki asked questioningly, looking into his eyes, his mind fogged by sleep. His fledgling pulled away and without warning, leapt backwards, turned, and pushed open the door. 

The hall filled with a searing light as the dawn streamed in and Nino was set ablaze instantaneously. 

Nicki screamed, scrambling to his knees and falling in trying to reach the door to pull Nino back in. The light streaming in shocked him in pain, making him cry out and draw back. It saved his life and gave Armand the pause he needed to recover from the shock of the sight of a vampire's immolation. The burning figure had stepped into the alley and they could see the clothes curling up, the black shape dancing underneath the sunlight. Nicki gritted his teeth and ran for the door after Nino despite the deadly light.

"Nicki, no!" Armand cried, grabbing him and shoving him back. Nicolas fought against him, but his limbs were leaden with the oncoming sun. The light burned his hands and arms where he had tried to reach through the doorway to grasp Nino, but he paid them no mind as he strained with his whole being to reach his fledgling. 

As Nicki did everything he could to save Nino, Armand did all he could to make sure Nicki did not meet the same fate. The light was only dawn and did not hurt Armand as much as he knew it did Nicki, but it was death approaching and he grappled with the writhing, struggling, kicking mass of limbs that was his composer and erstwhile lover. 

"Save him, Armand!" Nicki begged unexpectedly, his voice choked with sobs, for the dawn was growing stronger and the sleep was pulling him helplessly under. He lunged again for the door but by now Armand's clothes were smoking and he gave a final shove at Nicki and slammed the door behind them, collapsing with his back against it in the safe darkness. 

Sleep would not come for another hour for Armand, and he prayed no one would come across Nino's remains in the alley. They took no packages until the evening, and few had cause to go down that way. And yet he knew these thoughts were automatic, like the survival instincts of some mindless creature, because he could not fathom what or how to reason with Nicolas once he awoke.

Dully, partially in shock, he looked over Nicki's raw hands, his singed clothing and hair and the ash on his face. He was sleeping the daytime sleep of their kind now, and nothing Armand could do would really disturb him, most likely. Only mortals posed a danger.

Armand picked him up gently, one arm beneath his knees and the other underneath his narrow shoulders, and took him down to one of the new rooms they had built. It was outfitted with a four poster brass bed and red silken sheets, and he hoped it would be soft and not cause Nicki's burns any pain.

Carefully he undressed him and flung aside the burned, sooty finery from the evening party. He slipped on a simple white nightshirt that made Nicki look a little too young and innocent, especially asleep and vulnerable in the big bed. Armand crouched down on the chair beside it and brought his knees up to his chest and watched him sleep. 

He sighed, and unwillingly the sobs broke from him, soft and muffled. It was one thing to mourn a dead vampire, a fledgling gone too early and for the wrong reasons. And yes, it pained him to think and wonder whether Nicki felt the same for him as he had for Nino when he stepped out despite his fear of the sunlight and of death. But Armand wept softly and restrained to himself where no one could hear because he was absolutely terrified. He had nearly lost Nicki tonight. It would have been so easy.

And if Nicki ever left the theatre, he could not care for himself! He'd take these risks. He'd get confused the way Armand had seen. He would expose himself to dangers without even meaning to. And that seductive outrageous ferocity that was the only thing giving Armand something resembling passion and life in this shell of automatic living would be gone forever. 

It had been too close tonight. 

He crept into bed, sliding beneath the sheets with Nicki, and wrapped his arms around him protectively. The bed was indeed soft. Good. He kissed Nicki's forehead. 

"I promise," he whispered, looking at Nicki's peaceful face in repose. "No matter how you rant, insult, or hate me, I shall never let you go." 

 

He awoke long before Nicolas was able to, and allowed himself the luxury of stretching and toying with Nicki's hair, which at least had healed overnight. He locked Nicki in the bedroom and dressed quickly from the wardrobe he kept at his office before going immediately to check the alleyway. 

There had been a rainfall during the afternoon and the clouds were still low in the sky. Any trace of the early morning's immolation was gone, even any greasy patch on the cobbles that might have remained. He stared at the spot where he had last seen Nino and wondered how he would feel if it had been Nicki.

Then he shook himself out of his reverie and went to see to the theatre's business. Best to think of routine for the moment. 

The theatre members arrived after their hunts or in their usual fashion, and Armand could hear the bustle of curiosity as they wondered where Nicki and Nino had gone. The two had been at least expected to spend the day at the theatre. That was the plan of safety until more permanent arrangements could be made.

"Armand?" There was Eleni's inevitable knock on his door. 

"Oui?" Armand asked. "Enter." He saw the look on her face and said solemnly, "If everyone has arrived, gather them in the audience." She nodded, and left without a word.

He closed the accounts books and correspondence box and walked to the first row. Never the stage, of course. The first row, before the orchestra pit, right where the center aisle came down. The theatre members were sitting or reclining in patches among the first few rows, talking or reading in solitude or waiting and watching, like cats. 

He folded his hands behind him and spoke, Eleni beside him, waiting patiently.

"Nino Rochambeau is deceased," he announced without prelude or fanfare. He waited for the inevitable murmur to die down, and noted the suspicious glances exchanged and who exchanged them. "After we returned from his outing, he continued to be unable to accept what he must do for sustenance. He bid farewell to Nicolas and went into the sun in the alley. Nicki was burned in attempting to save him before I was able to pull him back inside."

"How is Nicolas now?" Eleni was the first to ask. 

"I put him to bed in one of the new rooms. He was much aggrieved," Armand said pointedly. 

"So we don't know how he'll react?" Antoine said. 

"He has not awoken yet. I locked him in the room for his own safety," Armand replied. 

"Where are Nino's remains? I saw nothing in the alley," Laurent said. "Was it the rain?"

"I checked as soon as it was dark, but we will need to be sure no part was collected in a gutter somewhere," Armand said. There was a telltale shiver that ran through the assembled vampires as they all imagined what the consequences could look like. They would all volunteer in the search to ensure Nino's remains were thoroughly scattered, if only because they would have each wanted someone to do that for them when their time came.

There were no more questions. Sometimes fledglings simply could not cope, and Nino was made impulsively, with none of the vetting or rituals or explanations required to ensure the Dark Gift was not wasted.

"Eleni, if you'll come with me. I'm going to see to Nicki. The rest of you, make ready for the performance. Laurent, you'll direct tonight. Nicki's hands are burned. He'll heal by the end of the week but not tonight. Merci," Armand said, dismissing the meeting. 

"He gave no warning, Eleni," Armand said in a low voice as they walked back to the new rooms where Nicki was installed. "He said, 'I hear the sun' and he opened the door!"

"I am relieved you saved Nicki. Are you hurt?" she asked, glancing at him. 

"No," he said with a shake of his head. "I had thought Nino could be a sensible counterpart to Nicki. You saw him, Eleni, he managed to give Nicki boundaries he could heed."

"Armand," Eleni said, and her tone made him pause. He did not confide in her, not in this way about these things. "Are you all right?"

His cold stare was the only answer she received, and they said no more until they reached Nicki's door. 

The moment he slid the key into the lock, the door shook with the force of Nicki's pounding from the other side. 

"Armand!" he screamed. "Release me! Where is he? Armand, I know what you did!"

"What is he saying?" Eleni asked urgently, her hands against the door, feeling it shake with the force of Nicki's rage through the wood.

"I do not know," Armand confessed, visibly shaken. He had left the key in the lock and his hands were limp at his sides, and had Eleni not known him so well, she would have thought him perfectly composed.

"Nicki? Nicki, it is Eleni," she called through the door. 

"Eleni...?" Nicki sounded confused, distraught. They heard snuffling, and a chair being moved. "The door is locked," he said, though he had heard the key moments before. "Nino is dead, Eleni. He burned himself in the day!" he sobbed, his cry turning into a scream of pain and blind rage.

"I'm coming in, Nicki," Eleni announced, and exchanged glances with Armand. He stood aside so he would not be seen in the doorway, and waited as she entered. Nicolas, to his credit, had not trashed the room as they had expected.

Instead, he had pulled the silk sheets around himself on the bed and sat in the center with them draped over his head like a great cloak. It brought a distant pain to Armand to see him like this, and he stayed back, drawing backwards before Nicki could see him.

"Nicki, Armand says you are hurt?" Eleni asked. She approached the bed and reached out for his hands that were draped in red silk and white linen.

He winced at her touch, drawing away from her, for his hands were pink and raw with new skin and they were not healed.

"We can bring you something," Eleni ventured, stroking Nicki's cheek and his closed eyelids, but he shook his head, sniffling a little, and looked at her.

"Where is the little devil hiding?" he asked her. "I want to see him. Why didn't he come to visit me himself?"

"Were you going to scream the same recriminations at me?" Armand asked, leaning against the doorframe. He had decided to come in after all and he was trying to look like he did not care, as he folded his arms. 

"You did this!" Nicki said, tears in his voice. He tumbled off the bed, flinging off Eleni, and grabbed Armand by the lapels. The ancient did not budge, and Nicki only succeeded in drawing himself closer. "You drove him to his death!"

"Nino died because you forced him into something he was never prepared for and could not fathom," Armand said scathingly. "Do not heap your mistakes upon me."

With his dark and very curly hair loose and the night shirt hanging in folds from him, Nicki looked like a wounded angel that had gone mad with grief for Heaven, beseeching the Devil in a Botticelli god's form for mercy and absolution. He wept blood tears now, unable to deny the truth of his fatal mistake.

"Why didn't you save him?" Nicki asked, and he sounded defeated. He dipped his head, shaking it slowly, and then wrenched at Armand's lapel's furiously to cry in his face, "why didn't you save him?"

With a single sweep of his arm, Armand flung Nicolas to the floor for his presumption. The violinist righted himself, then collapsed at his elbows at the pain of his hands against the stone.

"Because of you," said Armand, furious with himself and with his admission, before Eleni of all people. He glanced at her and she must have seen something in his face, because she knelt and gave Nicolas a kiss on his temple.

"I don't understand," Nicki muttered to himself, looking in his lap as Eleni left and closed the door. "You could have--"

"You think I didn't want a sane, tame composer?" Armand whispered. "I could not save him without risking you!"

Nicolas lolled his head to the side in misery, his tears freely flowing. Armand hauled him up roughly and threw him onto the bed, where he landed on his side with a soft whump.

"I almost lost you," Armand said softly, his eyes misting as he looked down at Nicki lying curled on the bed, stricken with grief. He crawled onto the bed and hovered over Nicki, who turned his face away. Ignoring Nicki's whimpering sob, he kissed his neck, then licked the blood tears coursing down his cheeks with a slow relish. 

"I could save but one, and I saved you." He kissed Nicki's cheeks and smoothed the hair from his face, and gripped his wrists tightly. "You doomed him, Nicki. You killed Nino the moment you let him in, the moment you thought he and you could be anything more than predator and prey."

"No, Armand--" Nicki whined in pain, writhing and trying to draw his raw hands away, but Armand was relentless and stronger and he quickly bound them together with the roll of bandages he drew from his pocket. These he tied to the bars of the brass headboard, wrapping and knotting several times with barely any give, so Nicki could only grab onto the bars, but not reach any of the knots. 

Armand paused and grabbed Nicki by the chin, forcing him to look at him.

"You killed Nino," Armand said, his eyes wide and his tone certain, even as Nicki shook his head in denial and anger and grief. "You did, you killed him. You encouraged his dangerous obsession when he never understood what we are. You gave him the music before he was ready. You killed Nino."

"I didn't, I--"

"You killed Nino."

"N-no, it--"

"You killed him, Nicki," Armand said, nodding seriously, pleased that Nicolas was looking uncertain. "You pushed him away and he went into the sun for you. You drove him away. That's what you do to people, Nicki. That is why you tried to go after him. But I would not let you make the same mistake. So I saved you. But I could not save him. You killed Nino and nearly killed yourself and I could only save you." He let go of Nicki's chin and was satisfied to see that he was less tense now, his grief coming in waves and his anger less directed, no less intense but now more unfocused.

He bent to caress his delicate arms and his face while Nicolas wept piteously, delirious in his mourning for Nino, yet still shying away and grimacing as Armand kissed his neck and plundered his mouth, pressing fierce, sharp kisses upon him. This was par for the course in Armand's affections, and Armand had long trained him in blurring the lines between pain and pleasure until, in his loneliness, all Nicki really understood was the force behind them. He sucked on his lips as he twisted Nicki's nipples painfully, drawing a hitch in his breath.

He put his hands underneath the linen nightshirt, feeling the smooth lines of Nicki's sides and scratching the thin skin stretched across the bones of his narrow hips. His hands pressed hard into the flesh between Nicki's ribs, relishing the give beneath his long fingers. He tasted the skin between his legs and his balls, delighting in the unwilling moan he coaxed out of Nicki when he softly mouthed them, his curly brown hair tickling his nose.

"Don't--" 

"Shh. I'll take care of you. I will always be here, no matter what you do."

He flipped Nicki quickly onto his chest, shoving him forward with his bottom in the air so that he was on his knees, and gently wove his tongue around Nicki's anus. He licked slowly, his fingers gripping the backs of Nicki's calves tightly so he could not kick. Nicki's buttocks were firm and smooth, and he ran his fangs against them briefly, tempting himself, before he resumed his ministrations. Before long, his licks were so gentle even as his tongue slowly entered into Nicki and opened him, that helpless sobs broke from the violinist beneath him, his knees gone weak and his mind a wreck, pinned between helpless grief and a fear of what was to come that was so strong that words had escaped him.

Satisfied that Nicki's will was broken and he would no longer fight, Armand inserted one long finger, hooking it a little to lengthen Nicki's legs, as if pulling on a string. He added a finger, making Nicki gasp between his sobs, his eyes wide as Armand exposed him, adding another finger, then another, stretching him and making him vulnerable in a terrible fashion. With his fingers still inside Nicki, he lay down beneath the violinist and leaned up, taking his hardening cock in his mouth.

Nicolas was shaking his head, but his lips were no longer forming words, his shuddering sobs the only thing consuming his energy now as he understood this would be his only fate tonight. And then he moaned as Armand sucked on his cock in time with short, sharp thrusts of his fingers into his anus, his mind flown and his understanding of pain and pleasure long gone, a creature of reaction and passion alone. When Armand felt he was ready he released him, letting him collapse onto the bed before rolling him onto his back.

"I am going to use your mouth first," he said to Nicki. "Don't bite, or I'll make sure you regret it."

Nicolas looked up at him uncomprehendingly as Armand slipped out of his clothes so that he was naked, comparatively smaller body lithe and graceful as it straddled Nicki's chest. He grasped a handful of Nicki's hair, just tight enough to be painful, and moved his head close to shove his cock past his swollen, bitten lips and down his throat. He was loose and pliant and he swallowed reflexively, causing Armand to groan despite himself, and he grasped Nicki's head with both hands and began to thrust into his mouth shallowly, establishing a rhythm that seemed to hypnotize Nicolas into submission.

"Tighten your lips a little," he commanded, and was rewarded with obedience. "Good," he purred, loosening his grip on his hair. But Nicki wasn't entirely there, not quite, and he was just a little too compliant. Armand left the softness of his mouth, Nicki's spit dangling briefly from his slack lips before he closed them and licked them.

Quickly Armand hoisted Nicki's knees up over his own shoulders and moved forward, high enough for it to be an uncomfortable angle for him, so that his body was like a plank, to be lifted off the bed every time they moved. With that in mind, ever so slowly and trusting in his earlier preparation, Armand grabbed Nicki's chin and locked eyes with him as he sank his cock into Nicki's ass, the tears of pain welling up in Nicki's eyes with each increasing inch making Armand harder and harder. When he was buried until Nicki's buttocks met the reddish-brown curls at the base of Armand's cock, Nicolas was taking small gasps to cope with the pain, and the frown on his face was delicious.

"I'm here," Armand promised him, and was rewarded with a gasp of pain as he pulled out swiftly and plunged back in, making Nicki's eyes shut tight and then fly open from the shock of the force. "I will always be here."

"I-I-" Nicolas struggled to say, but he was having trouble with the words. Armand shook his head and smiled, thumbing a tear from the corner of his eye and licking it off his finger. Then he began thrusting in earnest, his hips steadily jerking as deep as he could into Nicki, hard enough to lift his back off the bed as he did so, before withdrawing until he was almost completely past the first ring of muscle before plunging back in. He grasped Nicki's hips, digging his thumbs into his buttocks for leverage, and increased his speed.

Nicki screamed. His eyes were becoming glazed with pain, so Armand varied his speed, bringing him back with several sharp jabbing thrusts, drawing brief staccato cries from him before resuming his rhythm, keeping him focused on Armand instead of a distant place where his mind could take refuge.

"Tell me that you're mine," Armand commanded him, fucking him more roughly now and faster, feeling his body melt under the order.

"I-I'm y-yours-s," Nicolas struggled to say, his mouth trying not to return to weeping. His hands were no longer twisting in their restraints, and his body had gone limp, pinioned wherever Armand had contact with him. He kept trying to turn his face away, only to be startled into pain by some new twist of his limbs or angle of Armand's invasions. Armand wrapped his fingers around Nicki's erection and twisted gently, teasing and pumping him generously. "I'm yours, I'm yours, I'm yours!" Nicki repeated, opening his eyes to look at Armand while he said it whenever Armand stopped because he had shut his eyes from the pain or the shame or the betrayal of it.

"Do you love me?" Armand asked, pushing into him again with enough force that he could hold his fingers in place and move Nicki's cock through his hand from the thrust of his own hips alone. Despite Nicki's misery and fear, it was stiff and hard, slicked with his own blood as Armand squeezed it.

"I hate you," Nicki said convincingly, and groaned when Armand bent him painfully, almost impossibly still inside, to drain a penalty draught of blood from the base of his neck for the answer.

"Yes, but do you love me?" he asked again, as Nicki panted, heard the question, then sobbed from the exhaustion.

"I love you," Nicolas wept, and when Armand grabbed his chin because he had said it with his eyes closed and into the pillow where no one would hear, he opened his eyes and screamed at Armand, his eyes filled with fire and passion and hatred, "I love you!"

Armand came with a moan, white-hot jolts of pleasure shooting through him, and he made sure Nicki followed suit, the pink come quickly caught and tucked in a handkerchief as if no crime had been committed.

"Mon Dieu," Nicki groaned, closing his eyes. "Fuck."

Armand slapped him, and he opened his eyes, fanging and then withdrawing in fear of punishment and retaliation. He could not get very far, tied up, knees weak, and more or less fucked out of body and spirit. His tired, mewling whimper sent a thrill down Armand's back, and he pulled out with a shiver.

With a sigh, Armand enveloped Nicki in his arms, drawing his prone arms and legs close to him before sinking his fangs into his neck. 

They were on the same endless shore of Nicki's personal world, and there was that bonfire there, and there was nothing here but the crashing of the waves and the blackness up ahead, no stars, nothing but these shades of grey and black and dull white that made the sands look like black diamonds.

"WHY ARE YOU HERE?" Nicki screamed, and Armand turned to see him standing across from the bonfire. He was dressed in that damnable red coat they had stolen him in as a mortal. "Haven't you done enough?"

"You're mine," Armand said simply, and spread his arms out. "There is no where I may not go as I wish."

"NOT HERE!" Nicolas raged, tackling him clear across the bonfire, but Armand was ready for him, and it was what he had come here for as it was. Nicki was in no physical state to put up a fight but Armand was not nearly satisfied or done with him yet, and so he came here. He landed in the sand with Nicolas on top of him, permitting him a blow to the side of his face that he rolled with, just to feel what it was like again, and to rile his temper. He kicked Nicki off and landed blow after blow on his chest, his arms, his face, until Nicolas fell back into the sands. 

They grappled, kicking up water in the surf and sputtering, wet hair plastered to their skin, causing them to shiver despite themselves, their clothes wet and clinging. Armand twisted, turning Nicki onto his back and holding his head under the water. The composer struggled for air and kicked Armand hard in the gut, landing him in the wet sand as Nicolas sat up and coughed and gasped, then dove directly at him with his fingers around his neck. He got one punch in on Armand's eye before he was knocked back several yards into the cliffside. Rocks crumbled and fell around him as he blinked and saw Armand emerging through the dust towards him.

"You get one hit," Armand seethed. "Just one."

"I despise your rules and I spit on them, O little master," Nicolas said mockingly, but it had been the wrong answer, for Armand launched himself at Nicki with the full power of his years and beat him bloody, the skin rending beneath the force of his blows. When it was over, Nicolas was breathing softly and shallowly amid the rubble, too injured to fight back any longer and too tired to do more than blink slowly and follow Armand's movements with his eyes. He couldn't move his arms or feel his fingers and his legs felt pinioned by something.

"I love that about you, Nicki," Armand was saying, as he looked through the rocks and picked one up, threw it away, and picked up another as if measuring its weight. Nicki looked a little panicked suddenly, and he licked his lips and looked around at the rocks surrounding him. He could scarcely move his head, and his eyes rotated in their sockets, trying to seek out an escape.

"What?" Nicki asked, his voice weak and broken.

"You fight against the inevitable. The unavoidable. Lessons I have long learned, you still rail against," Armand said in the manner of one describing a piece of fine art. He was sated now, and he was feeling generous in this private space. "It would grieve me to lose your passion, so I thank you for your little dramatics. Ah, here." He picked out a stone about the size of his head, and walked over to Nicolas. He smiled down at the prone figure and raised the stone high above his head. Nicki began to make a sound of protest, but the sudden impact of the stone on his skull shattered the thought.

Armand withdrew, having taken his fill of the paling vampire beneath him. Nicolas was asleep now, exhausted, worn out and used up, and, Armand hoped, from the fight in his mind, incoherent. He permitted himself a final fond caress of his legs, his cock, and his buttocks before settling the nightshirt around him and tucking him into the bed. The hands he left tied to the bedstead. They were pink and raw, and while he would have liked to keep them around for a little longer, they were both an impediment to Nicki's work and a frightening reminder of how close they came to losing their composer. After some hesitation, Armand bit into his wrist and dripped blood over the skin, adding more only when it seemed that more was needed to heal the skin. Presently Nicolas looked whole once more, a sleeping young man tied up in bed, handsome and innocent, exhausted and untroubled. It struck Armand then how much of a lie their appearances were, and he dressed quickly to be on time for the post-performance meeting.

When Nicki awoke the following evening, he was as incoherent and delirious as Armand had hoped. The damage he delivered in his mind had stuck. Nicki looked wildly and blankly at Armand, Eleni, and other theatre members, had difficulty focusing, and often stared off into the distance to hum a snatch of a melody. After he nearly attacked Jean-Michel for trying to play the violin for him and then tried to leave the theatre, they agreed that his hands should continue to be bound for a day or two more so he might recuperate in bed. 

It was surprisingly simple to bring him victims for his recovery. On the fourth day, Armand saw to it that Mercedes and Marie carried off his two mortals for the evening, and then sat with him for company. His fits of despair were shorter now, and he was no longer violent. By tomorrow he might be ready to resume his former routine.

"The entire theatre has searched since his passing," Armand told Nicolas consolingly. "His remains were scattered, of that you can be assured."

"Thank you," Nicolas said with a heavy sigh, and closed his eyes as Armand caressed his cheek softly in genuine concern. He cringed, but it passed and his mouth unfurled. "You know, I composed a song for him."

"You did?" Armand asked in surprise, withdrawing his hand.

"I was going to play it for him in his own little act at the next play," Nicki said with a nod. He stuck his fingers in his hair as if to grasp the thought and pluck it out, then pushed his hands back into his lap. "He never heard it."

"He worshipped everything you did," replied the coven master reassuringly.

Nicolas twisted his hands in their restraints nervously, and looked to the side. He was feeling guilty about Nino's death, Armand knew. He wondered how much of the traumatic rape Nicki remembered.

"We can forget anything ever happened," Armand told him softly, as if he had just spoken a secret.

"It can't be as before," Nicki said doubtfully. He closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the wall in silent despair.

"And you want it to be as before, uncertain of your sanity this week to the next? This is but a short time in an eternity."

"None of you think I will last that long." The silence was uncomfortable, because what Nicki said was true. 

"Nevertheless," Armand said, and he put a hand on Nicki's and grasped it tightly, noticing the trembling when he did so. Blood tears had begun to run down Nicki's cheeks again. "I will always be here."


	3. Eleanor Singleton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An English choir mistress applies to the Theatre des Vampires. Her first meeting with Nicolas de Lenfent is inopportune, and the more she learns about the composer, the more she becomes convinced that death would have been kinder.
> 
> After the Englishwoman's departure, Nicolas finally hoards enough of his sanity to buy a ticket of passage to where Lestat is rumored to be. If only they would talk, they could fix everything, and their conversation could continue. If only Armand would let him alone. But instead, the coven master finally throws Nicolas off the deep end, but not before giving Nicolas a glimpse of a secret pain he'd thought hidden forever.
> 
> This chapter contains: Mental Instability, Mental Health Issues, sane!Nicki, Masquerade, Rape, Nonconsensual Fisting, Nonconsensual Anal Fingering, Violence, Amputation, Drugged Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Consensual Sex, Multiple Orgasms, Imprisonment, Gore, Horror, Hallucinations, Mental Disintegration, Mental Breakdown

The freckled stranger disembarked from her carriage with her trunks and entered the boarding house as quickly as she could. The transient travelers of the great city of Paris were often forgotten, especially at a time as turbulent as this, but she did not wish to attract notice. Few vampires could resist the chaotic bloodbath of the revolution, were it not for news of the angel-faced boy coven master who governed the city from the guise of a theatre director. He was an old one, it was said, who cleared you out without warning if you breached their laws or posed a threat in any way to their existence in the city.

Eleanor Singleton, born barely a century ago and made when she was a young choir teacher by her mistress and the mother of her personal pupil, wanted no such attention. But she loved the music still, and she was intrigued by the idea of a theatre company of vampires hiding in plain sight, flaunting their twisted darkness for all to see. She had arranged for a ticket to tonight's performance, and was eager to petition them to join the coven. London held no charms for her anymore, for it was not the same city she recognized, and populated with royalist emigres from France at any rate.

She had her traveling trunk, with the lock from the inside, taken up to her room with the rest of her bags, and turned about to survey the first floor tavern while the landlord rooted about for the keys to his room. She had chosen the inn because it was but a few streets away from the Boulevard du Temple, and because no one would ask questions about a woman traveling alone here. She had never been to Paris before, and did not want to be lost if she should desire to meet with this Armand de Romanus for any interviews or tests for her application. She caught a whiff of blood in the room, and with a nasty shock realized there was another of her kind in the room.

Off to the side was the perfect facsimile of an attractive young man, delicately built and featured but with strong limbs and fine, long fingers, who was talking and gesturing animatedly with mortal students about his apparent age. He was dressed in casual finery, a white shirt half-tucked into his breeches, his beautiful expensive lace cuffs limp as they poked out from his jacket, and his dark curly hair carelessly tied in a black silk ribbon. His dusty dark brown frock coat looked like it had been roughly shoved on as an after thought. It was not out of place in the rough student tavern of this era, and she hid a smile at his disguise. He was deep in conversation with his fellows, his expression eager, if not punctuated with cynical smirks every so often.

He did not appear to have noticed Eleanor, who straightened her small dark purple tricorner hat and smoothed her winter traveling coat. She had written in advance of her petition, and they knew she was due to visit this week. Was this a representative from the theatre come to scout out possible locations where a visiting vampire might rest, or simply a theatre member who was diverting himself for the evening? Or simply another visitor like herself?

The other vampire leaned and tilted his chair back casually, one arm wedged behind the chair back and his other outstretched, his wrist keeping him in contact with the table. There were other women here, for this seemed to be a popular student tavern where the rules were lax and every man and woman was an equal citizen, and she was plainly dressed at any rate with her dark traveling coat still wrapped about her from the cold. She took a seat at a table close enough to hear their conversation, and upon nearing them, she realized this one was quite young, and weak at that, a fragile immortal, if such a beautiful paradox could be possible.

"And I am supposed to accept that the assignat will last as a form of legal tender?" the vampire was asking scornfully, but there was an amused smile on his face and no hostility among the students.

"Theoretically, they might be the only form of currency we will have," one of the mortals argued. "We do not even know what will happen to the parlement."

"We're all bankrupt anyway!" his friend said despairingly. "The government's bankrupt, we're bankrupt students, there's no food, all we have is--"

"All we have is wine and more wine," the vampire said gently, motioning for another bottle. He poured more for them and Eleanor wondered if this was some long seduction she was witnessing. "Bullshit, Toulouse," he said genially to the pro-assignat student, leaning forward a little and putting his elbow on the table. "They are government-issued bonds. With nobody but these radicals getting anything done, you'll have massive hyperinflation when they overprint in quantities disproportionate to those seized church lands. People will be dying in the streets."

"An upper limit on how many are printed then," Toulouse replied.

"The government will fail," the vampire said, his voice hushed, forcing them all to lean forward. "So will the next government, if not in two years, then five, then ten. There will be food riots, there will be war, and there will be blood running in the streets, and there will be people begging for death before this is over." He smiled as if it was a dream of paradise he was describing. "And all the little horrors that we can barely imagine will come knocking and visiting at night, creeping through windows, nestling against you in carriages, waiting for you at the end of a street when you are lost and the moon is dark. There will be chaos before any of you come out alive, and death will be your bosom friend."

The youths around him leaned back and chuckled nervously, and Eleanor could tell that the wine had turned to ash in their mouths and they felt some measure of truth in what their host was saying.

"And what about you then, Nicki?" the despairing, bankrupt youth jeered, clearly drunk and upset.

"I'll be in my little theatre of course," the vampire he had called Nicki replied, and Eleanor's heart leapt to know her hopes were confirmed. "Laughing at all of you who decided to stay in class. Just remember me when you're starving, and come when you're ready for some real wine, rich as blood."

At this, Eleanor's ears perked up. Recruitment! What was this? She had not thought the coven in Paris used such bizarre and unrestrained tactics, unless they were building immortal fodder for protection against the approaching unrest. Now that the Church had fallen, there was no telling what would happen to the nobility, the government, much less the royal family of France.

The students dispersed, but Nicki's hand shot out and grasped the bankrupt youth's arm. He had been slow to leave and was glad for the bit of support.

"Nicki?" he asked questioningly, as the vampire put an arm around his back to help him to the door.

"I hear you've been attending the Jacobin meetings," the vampire said quietly, as they left the tavern. She hesitated, then rose and followed them. The snow was falling again in a steady flurry, and she could see their figures on the next street.

"--but they're stable, Nicki," the youth was saying, stumbling a little as they headed down some steps to the quay.

"They're untrustworthy filthy bourgeoisie," Nicki replied. "And they're going to win over the Cordeliers five to one because that's how the world works."

"Then why are you trying to get me to stop going?" his friend asked, confused, as the one called Nicki released him and spun him out until he hit the brick wall of the bridge overhang behind him. Eleanor hid on the staircase landing, concerned about the exposed location.

"I don't really care," Nicki said sadly, covering his face as if about to weep. Then he began laughing, and what happened next confused Eleanor so much she remained frozen in her place for several minutes before she leapt up. Without warning the vampire had lunged at his friend, now his victim, and more like a slavering beast than an immortal, had torn his neck open with his fangs.

The mess was terrible, the blood fountaining down the mortal's chest as the one called Nicki slavered over the wound. She could hear him licking and then latching onto his neck and finally feeding upon the wild spurt of blood that fountained from the mortal. They were barely hidden by the bridge and she was thankful the snow was falling fast and covering much of the crimson liquid that sprayed out from them in all directions. She was about to rise when the vampire jolted, and to her surprise the mortal died, still in his clutches. He had drunk the death into him!

She hurried down the stairs and reached them as they collapsed to the ground, and frantically, she dragged the two of them underneath the bridge. The wound was immense, and could have been made by any knife or rough maniac harboring a dagger and a serious feud with the victim. She knelt by the vampire who was lying prone on his back where she had laid him out.

His eyes were open, glazed but unseeing. He panted, his lips and mouth red with blood. The front of his shirt was bloody and she was grateful that his dark coat would just barely hide and cover the stains. She had never seen such a kill, and had never known anyone could survive drinking the death into them.

"M'sieur?" she whispered, giving him a slight shake.

He blinked slowly, his head rolling from side to side as he tried to direct his face towards her voice. His graceful fingers, red and bloody, reached for empty air and dropped back down onto his chest languidly. He looked very vulnerable now, even in raw and post-kill state he wallowed in.

"M'sieur!" she whispered urgently, wanting to leave this exposed spot. She could hardly believe any vampire would risk such a foolish and blatant kill, much less leave himself prone to discovery and attack. But exposure for him was a threat to their kind, and she had a duty to that, same as he. She could not fathom what made him act so erratically tonight.

"Quoi?" he asked, and his movements were sluggish as he struggled to sit up. "Urgh. Putain. He was really drunk." He rubbed his temples, only succeeding in smearing more blood onto his forehead.

"We must get away from this place before we are discovered!" she said. "Do you think you can walk?"

"What? Why would we want to do that?" he asked her curiously, blinking and seeing her for the first time. He smiled most charmingly, and she was dismayed to find that she found it so rewarding and generous a sight. "My dear, why would we hide?"

"We cannot risk exposing the truth of our kind to the world," she explained slowly, as if to a child. "What you have done can never be allowed, for it places our secrecy in danger. Surely the one who made you explained this?" She remembered those long lessons her own mistress gave her, and that ultimate disappointment, to be found in the choir room.

"The one who made me?" he asked incredulously, as if she had slapped him. "Madmoiselle, what the hell are you talking about?" He laughed, and it was not a kind laugh, and he stood up and brushed himself off in the manner of a haughty gentleman. He staggered, for his victim had indeed been drunk, and righted himself again. All through this he laughed a low, sinister laugh that seemed to require no energy or breath, and the ceaselessness of it frightened Eleanor. More importantly, it was also a very loud laugh, and it echoed off the arch of the bridge they stood beneath.

"Of course I want us to be discovered! I want the world to know of this dark magic!" he cried happily, spreading his arms wide as he gazed at her. He suddenly looked alarmed and concerned. "Ah, perhaps you are selfish," he said, mocking her, circling her, his hands folded behind his back, his blood-smeared face alight with a rapacious hunger. His hair was wild, unkempt and helping his face, and he looked like some urban sylvan beast emerged from beneath the bridge to savage her. "You want to keep us a secret because you do not think there is enough to go around?" He turned on his heel and gave a low bow. "Fret not, my lady. We have an entire troupe of vampires waiting, if I can just convince them."

"You? You are with the theatre?" she asked incredulously.

The one they had called Nicki did not answer. He looked at her, his expression suddenly solemn and still, his head tilted to one side as he considered her.

"The one who made me," he muttered in disgust, and shook his head, his demeanor completely changed. It was at odds with the clothes he wore that had been torn in the struggle, his mane of hair, and the blood that dried and stained a waterfall from his mouth to his chest. "I would give the Dark Gift to everyone I see, so that they might come upon him, and he would know what he had done."

"You're mad," she breathed, horrified, taking a step back, because she realized he meant every word. "Did your maker know?"

He laughed again at her, almost drunkenly, and suddenly she felt a fool. It seemed he could not stop laughing. He was a threat to their secrecy, and he would have to be destroyed. She knew she was strong enough to do it, for her mistress had been strong and this Nicki was so obviously weak and out of control. It would be so easy to tear his head from his shoulders, or leave his broken body to be consumed by the sun.

She loathed to think of killing one of her own kind, but as he continued to laugh, no longer at her but not particularly at anything, she realized this was someone who should never have been given the Dark Gift, and that it would be a mercy to end him now. How he had lasted this long, she could not fathom.

She looked down at the corpse to check that there was nothing more to be done and that it could be left alone, in case her extermination of the poor mad boy devolved into anything physically taxing. The laughter suddenly stopped, and when she looked up, the vampire had slipped away.

The cobbles passed under her feet quickly, but there was no sign of the mad one, and she knew herself to be faster than many vampires her age. Surely she could outrun the young one!

But he was truly nowhere to be found, and she could not track him. Her best hope was to attend tonight's performance, and inquire about any rogue vampires claiming affiliation with the theatre.

She took care in her attire, wanting to demonstrate she could be elegant and yet unnoticed, a worthy member for inclusion, trustworthy and skilled, and a valuable representative. Her outer dress was slim cut, black velvet with sharp lapels in the same manner as a riding jacket. Her cravat was dove grey and a simple puff of layered muslin. Her hat was of the same style with dark grey, not silver, piping. A black raven's feather was affixed to it delicately with a small pin in the shape of a poppy.

Her red hair blazed beneath it in the ringlets tightly pinned to her coiffure, and she knew the effect was startling.

Her arrival at the theatre was largely unnoticed, and the tall, broad-shouldered blond vampire usher at the door merely bowed at her when he did not to any other guest. He took her ticket all the same with no comment.

The seats were simple but comfortable, and she had asked for something towards the back, so she might not only have a larger view of the theatre rather than the show, but also give her the opportunity to escape should her presence in the center of a coven of vampires turn hostile. This placed her on the right of the stage towards the rear but not entirely, and it gave her, according to her neighbor, a clear view of the angelic young theatre director, a boy, really, who often attended one or two acts of each night's performance.

"M. de Romanus?" she asked in surprise. She had not thought he would make an appearance, but for a coven master to take a public position as the director of the theatre was very like the nature of their gambit.

"So you do know a little of them," her neighbor said, who professed to be something of an admirer and a poetess. "You're in luck. His health does not always permit him to make an appearance, but the conductor tonight will please you, I'm sure."

"Why is that?"

"You'll see, dearie," the matronly woman said cryptically. "He is quite popular. It is the same with the rest. All the girls adore him. Half the boys are in love with him."

"And the other half? They want to be him?"

"Oh nothing of the sort. One either finds him absolutely charming or completely detestable," the woman replied. "It could be envy, but sometimes also, those with genius and artistic gift are understood by so few." Eleanor was not certain if the woman was still talking about the conductor anymore.

Fortunately, the small orchestra chose that moment to emerge into the pit, prompting a small applause. She craned forward, for she had a perfect view of the stage but only a partial one of the orchestra pit, as one of the few theatres, possibly the only one in Paris, that had adopted the concept of an orchestra pit.

All the musicians were wearing masques, no, they had ornately painted masques painted onto their faces, with jewels and small feathers pasted on to simulate real masques, no doubt to prevent interference with their instruments.

"Do you see the original genius in it?" her neighbor whispered.

"Director de Romanus has a flair for the dramatic," she replied.

"Oh no, they have a resident playwright and composer, M. de Lenfent, the conductor tonight, didn't I say?" the woman said. "My cousin dined with M. de Rochillard and Mlle. de Cisefoix, the actors who always play the lovers in the village tale, and they told her that he's the one who conjures all of this, writes the words, the music, the stage direction and the art direction for the set and costumes. They take it raw from the stormy M. de Lenfent and M. de Romanus tames it and shapes it into these little jewels for us."

"So they are very popular, are they? It seems you know so much of the company," Eleanor said, as the orchestra took their seats, vampires each and every one of them, tuning and fussing over their instruments.

"Times being what they are, I think what they perform echoes what is in the people's hearts," sniffed the self-professed poetess. "Ah, look!"

From stage left, a door opened and it almost looked like a man had stumbled into the theatre or been pushed through the door. He was fastidiously dressed in all black, silver thread picking out his lapels and buttons, with even a black cravat, and he wore an actual black masque with silver and red paste gems, with tight thin black lace overlaid. There was a beautiful gleaming violin tucked intimately beneath his arm, and the bow was carried loosely in his finely made fingers.

He had very dark chocolate brown hair that was tightly tied back with a silk ribbon, but Eleanor could see the waves in it as it threatened to curl into its natural shape. He was delicately built and his movements were gentle but strong and purposeful as he descended the stairs into the pit. He gave a curt bow of greeting to the audience, a smirk spreading on his childlike mouth. So that was the genius who fueled this enterprise. Would her membership depend on him as an ally?

"Do you know his history?" she asked her neighbor.

"Rumors. Studied with Mozart. Poor health, some kind of recurring fever. Read law at the Sorbonne. Nothing really believable. It doesn't really matter--you'll see, when you hear his music," she whispered, while the conductor set down his violin and turned to the orchestra. The lights were extinguished, and her neighbor shushed her.

And then the music began. The overture was mesmerizing, and Eleanor knew seduction and preparation for the act when she heard it. She felt herself being teased out of her thoughts and concerns for her candidacy and safety to join in this evening's conspiracy of learning, licentiousness, and lies. By the time the overture closed, she knew she wanted to join. It had been masterful and with subtlety, and she admired the pacing at which the composer and conductor standing before her drew the audience along into the opening act.

The theme was false appearances, and every single theatre member was wearing a masque of some kind. The stories involved masquerades, ghastly red and black balls held in the height of the Plague season, as death came in disguise and for those disguised, for the nobility who thought they could escape in covered carriages or disguised as peasants, for corrupt priests who fled as goat herders, all with comical or macabre results. It disturbed her, and astounded her, to see the mortals around laugh and gasp and shriek at the stories. It was as the woman had said. The playwright knew what the people wanted.

There was a one minute interval, and Eleanor noticed a stunning youth, not yet a man but not a boy, enter the director's box and sit down. His reddish brown hair was tied back neatly and he was much more finely dressed than many dared to be in these uncertain days. He wore no masque, and his large eyes locked her gaze in his clear across the room.

/Bon soir,/ came the unbidden thought, and Eleanor suppressed a gasp. She nodded a greeting. How could his maker have resisted? The boy looked like an angel, some Botticelli creation descended off a painting, and all the deadlier in his nearly clerical attire of black and white, were it not for the rings on his fingers that flashed as they set his fashionable walking stick against his chair. There was an unusual vanity in the way he did this, and a keen possessiveness as he looked out over the theatre, less like a selfish child guarding his toys and more like a lord surveying his properties.

He looked back at Eleanor directly, his thoughts searing the surface of her air tight mind. /Welcome. I invite you to introduce yourself after the performance. You may meet us backstage, stage left. We wish you no harm./

She nodded, replying, /Merci. I await your pleasure,/ and he looked satisfied with her response.

After the interval came the continuation of the cliffhanger from before, making way for the violin solo that would tell the tale of the lovers and their dance of desire and death. The orchestra stopped its mesmerizing puppet work movements and suddenly M. de Lenfent took up his violin, still facing the lovers on stage.

The first trill that sounded from the instrument nearly made her rise from her seat. She moaned inwardly in satisfaction, leaning back to let the notes wash over her as he played the lovers awake, their light, innocent playfulness full of joy and hope so unfettered that she knew it was beyond the reach of anyone born of man or woman. The longing and desire in the song wound its way around the violinist and through the audience, caressing and embracing tenderly, swelling in passion so that the lovers on stage were but a pale shadow to the emotions and inner theatre the music drew out in the individual listener.

She felt her soul stretch and fall in love and as she begged for it to last forever, the sinuous seductive note of death entered, and the betrayal began, and she felt the stab of heartbreak at what was to come. The sharp notes, a storm of impossibly fast pizzicato and dark long rapid torturous strikes against the strings rent her feelings in one direction and then another as easily as it did the puppet actors on stage. They tossed their bodies violently, and she felt almost envious, that they could express the pain when the loss she felt now would never end. She wanted the earlier embrace but she knew none but that singular violinist controlled--she blinked.

He seemed consumed by his own music, his body twisting and turning with each passionate slide of the bow and each inflection. The violence she felt in her emotions, pantomimed in shadow on stage, was fully executed on the composer's overwrought body as he played, the violin and the music giving him no quarter. She could smell the blood sweat coming him, and even with his back to her, he seemed almost to be in pain.

Expecting the orchestra to be accustomed to such performances by their kappelmeister and thus either bored or professionally blank, she was startled to see them as moved as she was. Perhaps this was a new piece. It was impossible not to be moved to one's core, and quickly she glanced up at the theatre director.

His expression remained unchanged, his ageless youthful face placid and calm as it gazed down at the performer. She suddenly understood how he could be the coven master for such a collection of vampires in a sophisticated and chaotic glittering city as Paris. He was eternal, a true ancient that could stand the test of time. How else could anyone survive the centuries?

With a wrenching gasp, she felt the piece end as the lovers finally collapsed, death having won at last. The violinist leaned on his sheet music stand momentarily as if to recover, and then turned around to bow perfunctorily and as swiftly as possible to the thundering applause that followed. He then twisted back around without further acknowledgment or even a single glance, as if he wanted to forget the incident had ever happened, and set down his violin again.

The rest of the show seemed to stretch and linger, soothing the audience's nerves following the dramatic violin solo, only to pick up again at the very end with a revolutionary-appropriate story. The audience left the theatre humming.

She remained in her seat, hands folded in her lap, stunned. The mortals were leaving and a few admirers were approaching the backstage entrance to give flowers and the like. The musicians and the conductor had climbed down into and disappeared from the orchestra pit as soon as the curtains closed. The director had left his box before the final act.

"Madmoiselle?" the tall broad chested blond usher was standing at the end of her row.

"Oh, yes," she said, standing up.

"M. de Romanus invites you to see us backstage," he said. "I am Félix de Quintheau." His masque was light blue, with minotaurs locking horns on the nose bridge.

"Eleanor Singleton," she replied, taking his preferred hand with a smile.

"This way, Mlle Singleton," he said, his French accent giving a lilt to her name. "Have you only recently arrived?"

"Just tonight," she said. "I was most eager to attend, and to have an audience with M. de Romanus."

"How did you find the show?"

"Quite clever. The music was simply sublime, I have not the words to describe what divine mind could have composed it," she said excitedly.

"Hah," her escort said unexpectedly. "Forgive me. Our composer is a rather...singular individual. I could not predict his mood were he to hear your review just now. Possibly I would find him equal parts more endearing and more insufferable."

"Are there many quarrels?" she asked directly, preferring to know whether she was dealing with immortals who could choose to hold a grudge on a whim.

"M. de Romanus mediates," Felix said with a shrug. "It's a theatre company as much as anything else, and even the mortal ones are madhouses. Welcome."

He opened the door to a bustling set of hallways, painted actors dashing back and forth with post performance work, entertaining mortal admirers, or practicing lines with one another in rooms and in hallways. Somewhere she could hear the strains of violin music but could not locate the source.

She remembered what she had encountered earlier tonight and what Felix said, and wondered if she would find the unkempt, drunken wild-eyed student here. It did not seem like this professional coven would suffer such a feral and erratic creature.

"This way," Felix said. "I will take you to his office first. We can assemble everyone for you to meet later."

They passed a door from which flowed elegant notes of music, and she paused in the half-open doorway. The elegant conductor was seated on a simple chair, tilted precariously back, still dressed in his concert attire, his silver heels on his rich lacquered cherry writing desk as he played his violin idly. His large sober brown eyes peered at her from behind his masque and he lifted his bow off the string in momentary surprise.

"I'm sorry, I did not mean to disturb you," she said with a small curtsy, embarrassed. His generous and gentle smile seemed suddenly familiar, and he stood and gave a courteous bow to her in return. He looked about to speak, when Félix stepped in the room.

"Armand is never kept waiting," Felix said pointedly at the composer, who scowled without even saying a word and suddenly began producing jarring, screeching notes from his violin that sounded like dying cats.

Eleanor followed Felix quickly as he moved on, concluding there was no love lost between the two, despite what endearments Felix might find charming about de Lenfent.

"Does he...is he mute?" she asked, because few Parisian gentlemen could resist getting a word in, and she found his reticence charming.

"If only," Felix muttered. "Forgive me. We have quarreled in the past. He refuses to talk to me right now. It is a childish matter. I will leave you here." He bowed, and departed. She stood before a rich dark mahogany door at the end of a long hall. She was alone.

Mentally, she squared herself with facing an elder who could probably consign her to the flames with scarcely a thought.

"He's not so bad, madmoiselle," someone whispered behind her. She jumped, startled, and realized it was the violinist. He was standing very close, and she couldn't fathom how he had surprised her. His voice was seductive and familiar but she could not place it. "Welcome. Don't underestimate him. Do you want me to come with you? Felix is such a brute."

She looked down, realizing he was proffering her his arm, and took it gratefully. She knocked on the door and it swung inwards to reveal the boy sitting at a large elegant desk, a few papers stacked neatly with an accounts book and a box, a few candelabra, and a large mirror behind that had the effect of making a visitor rather self conscious.

There was a green leather couch against the wall with a rug and two chairs, and a divan for reading. Several bookcases lined one wall and a smaller safe was bolted into the wall against the fireplace. Visitors had to stand to speak unless Armand invited them to meet with him on the couch.

He did not inquire after de Lenfent's presence, but he rose in greeting.

"Welcome, Madmoiselle Singleton," he said. "You may call me Armand."

"Thank you for welcoming me to your city, Armand. Please, call me Eleanor. I suspect so many of us abandoned our true names long ago. There is no need to stand on such formalities," she said.

"Refreshing," Armand remarked, and she knew she had been evaluated from the moment she stepped foot in the theatre. de Lenfent had deposited himself lengthwise on the divan and draped one arm over the back to watch the proceedings. He fiddled absently with his masque, but left it on. The fingers of his left hand played invisible strings against the brocade upholstery. She wondered if he was actually there to evaluate her as well.

"The performance was...incredible," Eleanor said, thinking she might as well be honest. "I have never heard such beautiful music." She had expected de Lenfent to preen, or at least smile, but the remark was barely noticed, and there was no interruption to his invisible playing.

"There is not many an Englishwoman who would venture into Paris these days for a song," Armand said, unmoved, his hands still clasped behind his back.

"This is true. I petition to join your coven and this theatre. I was a choir teacher, to my mistress's child and the boy's friends," she explained directly and boldly. "I am weary of London and my maker suggested the Paris coven."

"Those are not reasons enough to admit you," Armand said neutrally and without hostility. She could read nothing from the mirrored surface of his mind nor his expression. "Even a great city such as Paris can support only so many of our number."

"Why not grant her a month's probation period and some training? For collateral she sleeps at the theatre with Juliette. Paul promises to leave for Rome anyway before the fortnight is out," de Lenfent suggested blithely. He flashed her a smile, which she returned gratefully.

Armand looked impatient with his composer, but nodded. "Two months probation. You'll report to Eleni. Juliette locks you in at sunrise. At then end, the coven votes. Unanimous approval for your entry with my single veto power. Are these terms acceptable?"

She sensed that no other terms would be offered, counter offered, or negotiable.

"Agreed. I consent. Thank you," she answered. Then, looking to de Lenfent, she added, "thank you."

"Nicki! Nicki, where have you gone? Claudette wants her masques back; she's packing up the costumes," a woman's voice was calling. Eleanor stiffened. Nicki! So he was with the theatre, as he had claimed. Which one was he? She tried to think of which actor it could have been, what unhinged villain he could have pantomimed.

A beautiful slender woman with long straight black hair entered through the open door. "Bon soir. Pardon, I had a question for Armand. You may call me Eleni," she said, as they shook hands.

"Eleanor. It's a pleasure."

Eleni looked past to Armand, then spotted de Lenfent on the couch.

"Nicki, could you give that back to Claudette please? And the rest," Eleni said patiently but in the manner of one long-used to chasing everyone down.

To Eleanor's astonishment, de Lenfent whipped off the black lace masque with a sigh, revealing the large, sober brown eyes of the feral madman she had encountered and decided to destroy earlier in the night. He smirked directly at her, looking suave and sleek in his fastidious attire, and utterly satisfied with his game.

"Claudette just wants to get my clothes off," he complained mildly to Eleni, hopping up and letting himself be herded out into the hallway.

"Hurry up; you still have rehearsal and the orchestra is waiting..."

"He thinks it droll," Armand said softly, when they had gone. If he noticed her astonishment when Nicki had removed his masque, he did not reveal it. "Did he introduce himself?"

"Not as such," she said, still trying to match the two vampires she had encountered. They were both tricksters, but so unalike...

"He is Nicolas de Lenfent. He writes our music and our plays, and the idea for this theatre sprang from his mind," Armand explained, to her growing astonishment. "Believe what you will from him." He studied her for half a second, then said, "Welcome to our little theatre, Eleanor."

After the brief interview that seemed a mere formality that would open many more trials to come, she brought her things from the inn to the surprisingly large room she shared with Juliette, a petite girl with long brown hair done up in loops of braided pleats. She was the newest member of the troupe, and nearly complete with her probation period, whereupon she would move to her own stone cell or whatever lodgings of her own choice. Their own safety during the day was their most valuable collateral they could offer to guarantee the security of the theatre and its denizens. Juliette was a tumbler, and had struck up a romance with Felix, a member of the old coven that came before. Armand had been the leader of that one as well. Juliette did not know how Nicki had come about, and he kept to himself for the most part, buried in his work. She made no mention that he was apparently mad, and yet suffered to live.

After settling what little she had, Eleanor wandered the halls, exploring the theatre. She flowed through the wings and backstage, where she could hear Nicki shouting imperiously at the orchestra and despairing of their performance. They shouted back in equal frustration, then started the music again, which to Eleanor's ears sounded exactly the same, but seemed to be much better in Nicki's estimation, for he concluded tonight's session.

She stepped out onto the stage softly, so as not to startle him while he took a seat at the pianoforte to scribble marginalia in the musicians' sheet music. He eyed her only briefly in acknowledgment as he wrote, and continued his work uninterrupted. As she approached him from the stage, she saw that he was wearing a loose white shirt, neatly tucked into dark brown breeches that ended in white socks with well-shined black shoes. His hair was the same as it was before, though every time he ran a hand absentmindedly through it, a few strands loosened and every so often a curl fell from the bundle.

She sat down on the edge of the stage, her dark purple heels dangling past her dress. He paid her no mind this time, engrossed in his work. She studied him as he went from one page to the next, until he had made notations and corrective advice for each player.

He stood and straightened the stack against the surface of the pianoforte, looking off absently. She saw her opportunity.

"M'sieur de Lenfent, a moment, please?" she asked.

"So I do not deserve the familiar?" he turned to her and asked wryly. It was said in English, with the barest accent, and she stilled.

"When did you have occasion to learn English?, she said in her mother tongue, almost doubtfully.

"I was cursed with this ability to think and read," he obfuscated, then shrugged. "And Milton and Webster are better in their original form."

"I wished to thank you for your support earlier in my audience with Armand," she said, as he rose from his seat. The theatre was empty and dark, and the pianoforte had the only remaining light.

"No one should face the imp alone on their first occasion," he replied gloomily.

"You are not on good terms?" She was surprised. The coven master was smooth and stern, but he betrayed no contempt of the composer. He betrayed little of any emotion.

De Lenfent gave a hollow laugh and stared at the first violinist's seat.

"Oh we are quite intimate, I assure you," he nearly hissed, eyes narrowed. She did not miss how his hands trembled as they clenched the chair back before him.

"We met earlier tonight, didn't we, before the performance?" she asked, watching him carefully.

"Oh yes," he said to her breezily. "My dining habits can be criminal, excuse me. Do be sure to tell Armand. He so loves the poison of Englishmen." He laughed unkindly as he walked away, leaving her to wonder at his words.

When he had gone, out of curiosity she went over to the stack of papers and found, where she had expected the mad hopeless scratchings of a demented taskmaster, the tidy sensible scrawl of any well-educated scholar of the era. The professionalism and expertise of the comments was so at odds with his strange behavior that she sat back in frustration, wondering if he was merely playing games with the newcomer.

She resolved to discover more of de Lenfent's origins, but her work at the theatre kept her busy. There was masonry and excavation that could occupy even vampiric speed and costume and set work. The printmaking they were beginning to do in house--most of the shops in the city were shuttered or had been confiscated by various revolutionary or royalist clubs for their own propaganda use.

It soon became apparent that access to Nicolas himself was actually quite limited, though this was never made explicit. Armand was his keeper in many ways and Felix a visible enforcer. Eleni guarded his well-being and happiness and spoke to him most often, though she did not always receive a verbal response. Aside from performances, all-company meetings, and his occasional high-spirits romps through the hallways and impromptu performances from his open door around which they would cluster and dance, he kept to himself with his door closed or only slightly ajar. Unbeknownst to him or not, Felix often stood guard outside, managing to look idle with a book or script or a piece of costume he was stitching. She could guess they would find the uninterrupted production of Nicki's work valuable, but the composer himself did not seek out the rest of the company either, though she had been here but a week.

She would see him leave from time to time and return with bundles of books. Often he would leave with someone to hunt, until she realized that he always left with someone. He was chaperoned on nearly every excursion, and always by someone older and stronger or who got along better with him. So they must know of his trespasses already!

She wondered what was different the night they met, when early one evening she had her answer in the form of a loud crash and angry shouting.

Juliette, who had been reading in her satin-lined coffin, gasped and sat up. "Not again," she whispered, and looked urgently at Eleanor. "Do not go. It is dreadful to see."

Eleanor ignored her, tossing on a white shift and running down the hall to where the commotion was, her red hair a blaze of fire down her back. There were curses and books thrown, and a cluster of vampires gathered in the hall.

"Things had been going so well," clucked Antoine sadly with a shake of his head.

"It was almost two weeks, wasn't it?" Pierre asked the others.

"I thought he was really trying," Marie replied loyally. "He was even keeping his books here again." They shrugged noncommitally, and said nothing as Eleanor pushed past them towards the maelstrom of shouts and growls and what sounded like chains. What she saw shocked her so that she covered her mouth and took a step back so no one could see her fang on instinct and fear.

Objects were strewn around Nicolas' room, knocked loose from their shelves and surfaces in a fight that had largely settled into a standstill. Felix was gripping Nicolas by his collar and kicking him over and over in the stomach as the violinist gave an almost feral growl, and twisted himself away so he could throw Felix over his back. He struggled to his feet, only to be knocked back to the floor. Nicolas looked a ruin, his shirt torn and blood stained, his neck and arms covered in bruises. He was panting hard and his eyes were dark and glittering with hate as he glared at Felix with a strange sort of triumph.

"You'll always have your petty roles for your petty masters," he sneered, and his voice was rough and had none of the cultured, intelligent sensibility it once did. "Does that comfort you?"

Nicolas rose and ran straight for the door, but Felix was too quick and he flipped Nicki about easily and smashed him against the wall, stunning him. He recovered in mere seconds and laughed in a way Eleanor found too familiar.

Laurent came running, attracted by the noise, and because Eleanor was closest, said, "get Armand at once. Tell him it is Nicki."

Armand was not in his office yet, and she did not know where he lived. Fortunately before she had to desperately seek out Eleni, the door to backstage opened and Armand arrived from his coach as was his custom.

"It's Nicki," she blurted in English. He took one sharp look at her hurried appearance, flung his hat and cape aside on the floor at her, and disappeared straight down the hall for Nicki's room.

Laurent and Felix had been attempting to subdue Nicki, and this was hindered by the way Laurent forbade Felix to injure Nicki at all, if only to incapacitate him. Yet Nicolas was doing nothing more, Eleanor realized, than trying to struggle through Felix's efforts at barring him from the door. If he struck anyone it was an inadvertent flail, for more often he banged his own limbs and head against surfaces, and the only blood he drew was his own as he tore his knees on the shards of mirror on the floor.

"Back to your work," Armand said quietly, dispersing the assembled members without even needing to be seen.

Laurent was trying to stop Felix from putting Nicki's arm in a painful twist as the violinist squirmed and thrashed at a speed and with a violence only a vampire could manage.

"Nicki?" Armand said softly.

Laurent and Felix released Nicolas in the manner of farmhands grateful to be freeing a horse they could not break. Nicolas fell to the floor on all fours, panting, and looked up at Armand. His expression softened as he locked eyes with Armand.

"Make it stop," he whispered. "Just for a little while, I promise."

Armand bowed his head in resignation, then shook it  
No, and before Nicolas could even get within an inch of him, he had grabbed the back of Nicki's head and slammed his throat down hard against the surface of the desk with neither warning nor any change in expression.

"No!" Nicolas thrashed. He twisted and writhed, shoving at the desk and kicking at Armand and clawing at Armand's hands, but his captor's grip was like a vise.

"Laurent. Felix," the coven master commanded. Quickly he took the manacles from them and secured them on Nicki's wrists and ankles, and these he threaded so quickly to the chair that Nicolas had no time to react before he was pulled backwards into it and bound tightly. He tried to move, but the chains were close and secure though his chest heaved against them as he breathed hard.

Before he could toss his head backwards, Armand had grabbed a fistful of his hair and set his face forward. A quill was placed in his hand and paper beneath it.

Nicolas wrote something sneeringly and Eleanor gasped when Armand violently smashed Nicki's face against the desk, leaving a spatter of blood on the page. Nicolas blinked, looking unfocused and limp, dazed by the beating, then blinked again as the fresh agony set in. Armand threw the page away and gave a fresh sheet.

"You think you can do this to me every--" Nicolas whimpered in pain, but the tightening grip of Armand's hand on his hair was all the warning he needed. He began to write again, swiftly and without pause and almost mechanically, and Armand nodded in expectant approval as he read over his shoulder.

"You know you cannot hope to hold them in your power forever--" Nicolas began to say in a low, feverish tone.

"Felix, gag him," Armand commanded.

With a ready white cloth, Felix nearly yanked Nicki's head backwards with the force of his capture. He knotted it tightly and expertly as Nicki worked his lips and fangs around it, seething through the cloth as if he could not help it. He seemed to be entering a trance, and Eleanor could feel a low drone emanating from his throat that was beginning to turn into dry sobs.

"Eleanor. You shouldn't be here," Laurent said, finally noticing her. He looked concerned, and when he approached her she backed away quickly into the hall, half-expecting to be bound herself.

"You sent me to get Armand," she said, almost shoving the coven master's things at him.

"Yes, thank you," Laurent acknowledged, closing Nicki's door behind him to shut out the horrific tableau. "Nicki suffers."

"I can see that quite clearly," Eleanor replied accusingly.

"You misunderstand. He is ensnared by the music. It lingers on the edge of his mind, he says, and it is a constant struggle for him not to succumb to its darkness and the wild frenzy into which it drives him," Laurent explained. He sighed. "That is what he tells me."

"What do you think?" Eleanor asked curiously.

He looked to the closed door and hesitated.

"In the beginning, I hoped that, well, that does not matter now. Now, I do not think there is much left in him but despair," he said. "All we witness now is but the slow death."

She stared at him, horrified.

"We should give him what peace we can, for all that we have done, but he makes it very hard," Laurent added. "And we need his ideas, all of those performances clamoring in his head, and that sublime music. So we cannot make it stop, as he asks us, and even if we knew how, would we? Do you understand?"

"I will make ready the costumes," Eleanor said distractedly, backing away. She had not wanted to learn this. They knew, and they fed the madness, and thought they could tame it while they leeched art from it so long as Nicolas could survive the ordeal, and survive his immortal body would.

"Eleanor..." Laurent began.

"It's...It is as Armand said. We have to get back to work," she said, feeling in hysterics as she fled.

What kept Nicolas here? He knew what they did to him, and yet he seemed bound here and returned even when he left on his own for his books. That night of their first encounter, he had been completely alone. He could have escaped this wretched fate.

And it was Nicolas himself who had conceived of his very prison!

The following night he acted as if nothing had occurred, passing her in the hallway just after dusk with a strained but courteous "m'amselle." He looked...weary. But someone had dressed him in a fresh change of clothing and he had his coat in his hand.

"Are you well?" she asked him, and he looked infinitely fragile to her then, like brittle glass, and she found herself wondering how often his fits came.

"Eleni sent me to tell you that it is your night off. You are free to do as you wish," he said, ignoring her question. "Tell me, what drove you from London?"

"Boredom," she answered, a little too rapidly, she knew.

He looked disappointed in her, and it surprised her that this made her feel crestfallen. He reminded her of a wild, ungoverned pupil, full of talent, but beyond anyone's reach of understanding, and resenting the world for leaving him alone.

"Well, may you find entertainment tonight. Bon soir," he gave a slight bow, and headed in the direction of Armand's office, to her alarm, but it was hardly her place to question.

She hunted quickly and without fuss, and immediately paid a visit to the lawyer who administered accounts for the theatre. She had seen his name on much of the correspondence that arrived, and though like any lawyer, he was tight lipped about his clients, like any mortal, his mind was open enough for her to pluck the address of Nicki's mortal residence.

Of course. Nicolas was well-educated, more than the rest of the troupe cared to be, for a vampire had time enough to read and recall all the books in the world but for the interest to study, reflect, and ask. His address was in a fairly wealthy street. Perhaps the old coven had taken him, then formed the theatre around his talent. But why stay? He had a home, and the other theatre members, by all accounts, retired to mahogany lined cellars with satin cushioned coffins, or sometimes simply luxurious beds inside secure rooms of lead and iron, in the deepest parts of their fine houses, hedonists and empiricists all.

She found the house and slipped up the side to the second floor balcony to peer in, in case he had left a mortal family behind. But the house was silent and cold, though the furniture was polished and it still looked lived-in. She heard voices, and pressed herself against wall beside the Fench doors, thankful they were shuttered closed in the winter.

A glow emanated onto the small snow-strewn balcony and she risked a glance through the slats. Candlelight entered the room, and she recognized Armand lighting the candles around the pianoforte and the desk, the growing glow of the room reflecting on his almost rosy cheeks. It made the events of last night all the more surreal, and she understood why Nicki referred to him as an imp, for she could see him as a demon incubus now, drifting through Nicki's house with the candlelight sparking off his copper brown waves of hair. She had never seen it loose before, and it made him look even younger, and maybe even a little lost in time.

There was another sound as Nicolas walked in with a short stack of books under one arm and another in his hand. He was reading as he walked and he had fed enough to look mortal, which Armand had difficulty managing. He looked about at the light and set the books down on a side table.

"You should compose something for us," Armand said, from amidst the glow of candles, and Nicolas visibly stiffened, looking uncomfortable. He approached Armand and when his hand went up like a caress, Armand grabbed him by the wrist just as it formed a claw. "You don't even know any better, do you?"

"I just know the music," Nicolas said despairingly, yanking his hand back and massaging the wrist. "All I have is that strength of feeling."

"And that you are mine. And that I own you. And that you love me," Armand said, watching him.

"And that," Nicki answered wearily, and gasped when Armand yanked his face down to meet his, his hands tight on Nicki's collar.

"Say it," he ordered through his teeth, his tone full of menace. He was beautiful and dangerous the way a finely crafted blade was, beaten and honed to perfection.

Nicolas shoved himself away from the older vampire, staggering a little because he had over calculated. He swallowed visibly, sat down on the pianoforte bench, adjusted his collar, and said inquiringly, lightly, "do you believe me when I say it?"

She had never heard Armand so discomposed before. With a snarl of rage, he grabbed Nicolas by the shoulders and kissed him hard. Nicolas struggled, pushing against him and tearing at his clothing, and she saw his skin pale quickly. When Armand released him, his mouth was bloody and his eyes were unfocused, as if in a daze, and in that crucial pause, Armand pushed him chest down onto the bench and shoved his clothing off with a vampire's speed.

Nicolas felt Armand's weight as he straddled his back, pinioning him to the bench chest down, and he tried to rise, only to find he had neither the leverage nor the strength.

"No!" he cried, helpless as Armand sank one finger into Nicki's anus in the manner of a child burning ants with a glass. He shook his head, frozen in dread and pain and afraid to move.

"You seem to delight in trying my patience," Armand said calmly, adding another finger and beginning to peel him open so delicately he drew small stuttered moans from his victim. With his other hand he rolled his sleeve back. He added another finger, stretching Nicolas wide, caressing his shuddering legs. "At least I will never hear you plead for mercy."

"No," Nicolas growled despite himself, and then clawed at the floor as Armand added a third finger and thrust his hand deeper, rotating gently with the blood his ministrations drew. Nicki squeezed his eyes shut and breathed short, hurried breaths until he gave a shiver and a whispered moan when Armand's entire hand was through, his thumb holding Nicki obscenely open as Armand peered into him like a curious child intent on squeezing every color of agony from the creature pinned beneath him.

He took a deep shuddering breath and choked on it, holding it as Armand began to shift his hand back and forth ever so slightly. Nicolas looked stricken, his back arching and his mouth open as he made desperate keening noises, trying to shift backwards despite himself, and Eleanor could guess what Armand's fingers were doing inside him from the movement of the tendons in his arm.

"Do you feel how I fill you, Nicki?" Armand asked, and did something that made Nicki cry out in a mix of pain and pleasure. He was no longer struggling, and instead his entire being seemed focused on being still and breathing those rapid, short breaths. Armand rose off of him, and he gave a small groan of protest at the twist of the hand inside him. It was cut off abruptly as Armand, standing now behind him, pushed his fist forwards.

Almost gently now, Armand moved the bench so that Nicolas faced the pianoforte, and with a tender, angelic smile on his beautiful face that belied his perverse intent, took one of Nicki's hands and placed the fingers on the keys, pushing his fist upwards and making Nicki choke and freeze, keeping his hand there. He reached over and placed Nicki's other hand on the keys, so that with his head bowed, Nicki seemed a hand puppet in a tortured pose.

"If the music is all you know," Armand said, "then play a new song for us. Make it a song of all the things I do to you."

Paralyzed by the hand inside him, Nicolas shook his head, his curls hiding his face as he struggled to breathe evenly. He swallowed again and gave a guttural cry as Armand withdrew a little and sank his hand into Nicki's anus past the wrist, and then even further. As vampires, they healed quickly even with Armand's draining a moment before, and each movement was like a fresh invasion that drew blood and suffering.

"Play our song, Nicki," Armand insisted, sounding like a spoiled child.

Trembling, one finger struck the keys and the torrent came, but it was not the discordant maelstrom she expected but rather a careful dance of towering figures. It abruptly changed, as Armand worked his hand further into Nicki, and it turned dark and sinister and passionate, the rumblings stormy in their minor key. Armand's eyes were alight with pleasure and he did something inside Nicolas that made him twitch and yelp in rhythm with the music, but never enough to stop playing.

Deeper and deeper Armand's arm traveled, until the whole of Nicolas was impaled upon his arm up to the elbow. Nicolas whimpered as he played, his playing uneven as Armand gripped the very core of him and twisted in that tightness, exposing him impossibly wide and claiming complete power over his being. Gently, he pulsed his knuckles and let his fingernails scrape Nicki's insides, enjoying the cries of distress in the impromptu torture sonatina.

Finally came that maelstrom of delicate notes, a whirl of snowflakes on thin ice, and then nothing at all as Nicki, exhausted, clutched weakly at the piano bench while Armand pulled and pushed inside him against his prostate, ever so slowly, feeling him quiver and shake around his fist and giving Nicki time to sense the control and intimacy Armand could attain with him. He whimpered, entirely at Armand's mercy.

"Look at how you simply suck me in," Armand murmured, almost tenderly, thumbing Nicki's prostate and making his eyes flutter and roll back in their sockets. He knew he was pushing Nicki into pleasure so extreme that soon the sensitivity would merge with the pain until that was all there was left. "Do you want more?"

"Y...oh god oh god," Nicolas whispered, as Armand slowed his strokes, letting him feel the fullness inside him and the diminishing of pleasure, the return of the ache and the bleeding and the raw stretch of muscles around his abused and torn anus.

"I will continue. Yes? Tell me yes and I will not drag this overlong," Armand promised, swiping a knuckle once against Nicki's sensitive prostate. He had trapped Nicki's cock against the bench, and its imprisonment must be causing him great agony by now. To be denied the release and to still be tortured thusly brought a great sense of power and possessiveness over the coven master.

"Yes, oh god, yes, yes," Nicolas struggled to gasp, knowing he was dooming himself to Armand's unfettered ministrations, that Armand could revisit this and say, did Nicolas not consent? Even if every part of him that mattered then, before, and after, was screaming no.

And then Armand began to move his arm ever deeper, wrenching hoarse sobs out of Nicolas, twisting his fist so that he made his body dance as it was impaled. The muscles in Nicki's neck were tight cords and he strained to keep still, to not contribute or encourage or give Armand any further reason though he needed none. His sobs turned into hoarse gasps in his throat as he bounced on Armand's arm wantonly, having passed beyond pain or pleasure. A thin line of drool was passing out of his mouth.

Nicki had broken out in a blood sweat, and his naked body was slick against the wood as it moved where Armand directed it. He could not stop himself from involuntarily bucking slightly, and with one sharp shove from Armand's hand, the blood tears smeared against his cheeks, his mouth a rictus of simple pure agony of the highest order.

His broken hearted sobs echoed through the flat, and he shook helplessly at Armand's whim as his arm continued to pump in and out of Nicki's ass, bumping and sliding against the tender, raw walls and yet bringing him searing, painfully intense pleasure. The sharp strikes into his very core were breaking him, and he sobbed, "I love you, I love you!"

"Say what I want to hear. Do you mean it?" Armand insisted.

"Yes, yes, a thousand times, oh Dieu, mon amour, you own me, you own me, I'm yours, I love you, I love you, I promise, I love you, I love you forever," Nicki babbled with the last of his energy, his tears staining his face red. He would say anything, denounce anyone, if only Armand would stop.

"Say 'please,'" Armand said, and at this, Nicki fell silent despite everything and in anger, Armand pulled his arm out to the wrist and plunged it back in to the elbow in such quick succession and with such violence he had to grip Nicki's shoulder in place as he thrashed wildly and blood poured from the poorly abused ring of muscle. Over Nicki's blind screams, Armand muttered, "still anything but beg, is it?"

Finally he gave a sharp shove that lifted Nicolas off the bench and cut his hoarse screams off in his throat, and withdrew his hand completely, flinging Nicolas roughly to the floor with the same movement. Nicki's tortured cock, compressed and stiff against the bench, was now freed and pulsed with blood semen from the repeated thrashing on his prostate, but it remained hard and twitching as he lay on his side, curled limply around himself. His eyes were closed and his arms held himself loosely and delicately, as if afraid of breaking himself. He sobbed quietly as if it were a reflex, helpless and shivering.

"The things you make me do to you," Armand sighed, as he absently licked Nicki's blood off of the entire length of his arm in the manner of a great cat after a kill. "You enjoy it, don't you? You know how much you need it and deserve it."

Nicolas shuddered and drew himself a little tighter as if he were cold.

"And do you love me?" Armand asked, kneeling to kiss Nicki on the cheek, being very careful to avoid the blood pooling around him.

"Yes. I love you," Nicki whispered faintly, his voice cracking, the edge of madness in it easy to hear. "I love you so much, Armand. And you own me. I am so completely, entirely yours." He looked up at Armand without moving his head. "And you'll always be here."

He closed his eyes as Armand picked him up gently and carried him to bed, for the night was not over yet.

When she saw them at the theatre later in the evening, Nicki was pale and quiet, and he went to his room directly with his books without speaking to anyone. Armand attended to his duties, and it was as if Eleanor had imagined the entire episode.

It was unsurprising to her that Nicki was unstable the following nights. He snapped at the orchestra for their performance, tormented the actors with mean-spirited comments, and never returned from a hunt neatly. It was abundantly clear that he was descending further into madness with each episode, and every time he began on a lower rung than the one he started with previously.

Eleanor's mistress had taught her it was their duty to exterminate those unworthy or tormented by the Dark Gift. And what of those tormented by their own coven master? What justice was there?

She was in the start of her second month when she was deemed trustworthy enough to accompany Nicki out on his nightly hunt.

He was quiet and half sober, and more prone to sullenness than playfulness as when they had first met. He had returned to the sophisticated young man for but a week, before, of his own volition, for Armand was away in Calais for two days, he descended subtly into a darker mood.

"You can take him on your usual hunt, or, if he feels in better spirits, accompany him to keep him safe," Eleni had cautioned her. "He is not to go near the cemeteries, or M'sieur Roget."

"I understand. Are you ready, Nicolas?" Eleanor asked him.

He nodded without saying anything, his expression skeptical and sarcastic. He followed her out the door with his hands in his pockets. Eleni had dressed him tidily in a simple white shirt and brown waistcoat. The cold snap had not broken and his old black coat almost seemed too thin for the weather. Younger vampires felt the cold more keenly, Eleanor recalled, as she noticed Nicki wrapping it more closely around himself. He did not complain, however, and instead looked inquiringly at her.

"So you drew guard dog duty tonight?" he asked, though there was no laughter in his voice. He grimaced and shoved his hands deeper into his pockets as if to ward against a deep pain.

They were far enough away from the boulevard that she felt safe enough to speak frankly to him.

"Will there ever be an end to their crimes against you?" she asked in English.

She turned back when she realized he had stopped walking. He was standing in the street, looking more wounded than she had ever seen.

Then his expression melted into malice and he said in English, in a tone she had never heard from him before, "and when they drove you from London with not even a letter of introduction, who was it who pronounced judgment and protected the little ones from you?"

She felt like she could not breathe. She had betrayed her beloved's trust, but her maker, her mistress, could not bear to see her destroyed. Over the body of her mortal grandson she had pronounced her exile, and the sickness had passed from St. Thomas' Boys' Choir for ever.

She must have made some sound, because his eyebrows rose in surprise. "Ho, I did not think I was right! What did you do, feed on the choirboys? Brava, m'amselle!" He laughed unkindly, the cold forgotten as he spread his arms wide and spun, staggering into her off balance. She shoved him away angrily, then placed her hands on his shoulders and pushed him into a nearby alleyway and into the brick wall. It knocked the breath out of him, reminding her of how weak he was.

"Oh, so proper, our choir teacher!" he laughed, unfazed by the violence. "What effrontery I have committed upon our guest. Did you want little vampire children of your own?"

He choked, suddenly, his hands going up to his throat and his closed lips. She was so very angry. She just wanted him to shut up. She knew her crimes. But he could not even care for himself. What right did he have to pass judgment upon her?

His eyes widened in fear as she approached him, mentally holding his vocal cords shut as she permitted him to breathe.

"Did you know we had such Power?" she asked, gesturing at his throat. His hands suddenly flew out from his mouth and were pinned to the wall by the wrists. "Whatever my crimes, we do not suffer the mad ones to live, M'sieur de Lenfent."

She hesitated. Not even with Armand had he looked so frightened.

"But are you mad, or simply responding the only way you can to their treatment?" she asked. She brushed an errant curl from his face and stroked his brow gently, mentally restraining him from fanging at her. "You poor man. Do you deserve a chance?"

She tilted her head to the side, admiring his beauty pityingly. "Your maker must have wept to see you die," she said. "Why did he leave you here? Why do you stay? Speak, and measure your words carefully, or I shall return to the theatre with naught but word of your death."

She released him, and he flattened himself against the wall away from her before staggering back from it, willing himself against instinct and fear. He could feel a Bach sonata rising in his head and it was so distracting, always the music there.

He shook his head as if to clear it, to throw it off, and tried to run, because he knew he could not, physically could not tell her what she wanted to know.

She caught him just as he reached the roof, but he took her by surprise with a tumble he'd learned from Antoine, the sonata giving him a rhythm after all as he struggled to his feet. They grappled with each other, and he knew, despairingly, that she was toying with him. Finally she slammed him into a chimney top so hard it broke his collarbone and his ribs and he wheezed, trying to rise, and she sat on his legs almost like a schoolgirl.

"Why did he leave you?" she asked, and he laughed weakly because she wasn't even winded and Armand's repeated drainings had left him so, so weak.

"I have more to fear from our coven master than I do from you," he spat out, and blinked when no violence came. He had grown so used to Armand's inevitable responses...

"It has to do with Armand?" she asked, surprised by his alarm. "What, is it like naming the bogeyman? He'll come when you call?" But Nicolas had calmed now, and was looking up at her more steadily and calculatingly.

"I stay because he might return," he volunteered. "I want him to see what we have done."

"And if he never returns?"

Nicki shuddered. "Then there is still the music."

"And what they do to you does not matter? I have seen how Armand abuses you. It is monstrous. Almost worse is how you countenance it at all," she said.

"I love him," Nicolas said simply. "We have each other." At this she shook her head.

"What is the imagined affection of an abused slave for its master?" she asked. "Has he entranced you so deeply?"

"What else do I have?" he asked lightly.

"And so you build this lie? To make it bearable? To craft order from chaos?"

"Such words," Nicki muttered distractedly, and gasped when his head turned at her mental bidding to draw his attention back to her. Armand did not resort to such tricks. He had suspected his golden-haired love (and it was love, no matter what he spat in his face to hurt him) might have such power when he flung him against the wall in their final conversation. But Armand preferred the hiss of pain when he struck Nicki, the blood and the crunch of bone, the slide of skin on skin as they fought and struggled. It grounded them in the reality of the present instead of their ghost existences in a world where they no longer mattered.

"There is nothing left for you but the madness you create to make sense of this hell? Speak the truth of it," she demanded earnestly.

"It can't be helped. Armand broke me long before I was ever given what they love to call the Dark Gift. It has been a slow descent to the inevitable ever since."

"So it is better that you die. You only needed to say," she said, striking the chord of fear in him. Ignoring the pain in his collar and ribs, he shoved at her, rising and catching her off guard. He stumbled, then cried out in pain as she reached out with her mind and crumpled his arm. It flung him against the chimney again, and he lay prone on his side, disheveled and momentarily stunned. He stirred at the sound of her approaching footsteps and scrambled to his feet, cradling his right arm gingerly.

"I don't want to die!" he snarled at her. She grabbed him where he swayed, hands on his shoulders, and held him at arms length despite his broken arm. His hair had come loose and he looked very forlorn and young. "You're not helping!"

"Your existence is merely a black hole of misery," she declared. "Death would be a blessing, despite your beauty and your music and your stories."

"My stories..." Nicolas breathed, a little hypnotized. He seemed to relax at the thought, and he smiled, cleaving to her.

His innocent delight quickly turned into a furious howl that was choked off as she yanked his head to one side and pierced his neck with her fangs. She kept her mind locked to him as she drained him, feeling his mind lash against her walls and his struggles weaken as he flitted against her like a moth, and when she released him, she was astonished that he still pushed against her weakly with his working arm, barely moving himself, though all of his concentration was focused on escape.

She would have expected him to be unconscious by now. In irritation, she hoisted him unceremoniously over her shoulder, rendering his kicking legs useless by dislocating his kneecaps and breaking his lower leg bones. He went limp, the hunger straining at him above anything else now, that need to feed driven by the need to heal his mounting wounds.

"It will be over soon," she said soothingly, laying him down on top of the sloping copper rooftop, where his fingers could find no purchase to drag himself away. His needy mewls threatened her resolve, and she looked away from his pleading, half-lidded eyes and rendered him mute with a thought. "It will be a mercy," she said, turning her back on him.

"Your idea of guardianship leaves something to be desired," said Armand's voice behind her. She turned to see him approaching, dressed in traveling clothes, his hair and mien immaculate. If he was furious, he gave no hint of it on his angelic countenance, and she was beginning to tire of that calmness.

"It is better than your long-term abuse," she retorted, and paused as she felt the presence of more vampires around them. Nicolas, lying at their feet, reached up weakly and slowly wrapped his fingers around what cloth he could gather from Armand's trouser leg. His lips moved, but no sound issued forth, but he was rewarded for his pawing by Armand's gentle embrace as the coven master cradled him and lifted him in his arms. Nicki curled up against his chest, looking oddly vulnerable being carried by a figure who appeared to have just emerged into adulthood. He closed his eyes, sighing as Armand absently rubbed the back of his neck as if scruffing a cat.

"I've not seen many with such precise control as you with your mind gifts," Armand remarked. "I did not think it possible."

"Choir teacher," she reminded him stiffly, as more vampires joined them on the rooftop.

"Nevertheless, despite your talents, we do not take kindly to mistreatment of our composer," Armand said, the threat clear in his tone. Nicki stirred, starting to panic against Armand. He finally deigned to look at Nicki, and when their eyes met, some unspoken understanding passed between them, the violinist tucked his chin in his chest and closed his eyes with a small sigh of relief.

"You mistreat him often enough then," Eleanor retorted.

"No one touches Nicolas,"Felix said to Eleanor, no longer sounding professional. He was leaning against the chimney with his arms crossed, and yet he managed to look menacing. Possibly this was due to the enormous halberd that he was sharpening against his nails.

"But you hate him!" Eleanor protested.

"What?" Felix said, genuinely surprised. He exchanged glances with the other members and then scoffed at her. "You understand nothing."

"We love Nicolas," Eleni said solemnly.

"We bear him great affection and high regard," Laurent explained, serving as the fourth cardinal direction. Other theatre members were emerging from the shadows to form a loose circle.

"You beat him and hold him prisoner. I dare not even repeat the evils Armand inflicts upon him--they offend Heaven and earth," she said, turning to seek a way out and finding none.

No one replied to this accusation.

"Do you not destroy the mad ones among you? The ones who threaten our secrecy?" she demanded, as the circled closed.

"Not Nicki," Juliette said sadly.

"He has suffered enough on our account," Laurent told her without explaining.

"He's just a broken bird, cherie. He gets confused," Marie said. She was looking with concern at Nicki, who had fallen unconscious in Armand's arms. "We try to protect him if he permits us."

"I lose my temper at him, as he does at me, but even in his dark nights he means no one any harm," Jean-Michel said, and he looked angry at her now.

"I think he hates himself more," Antoine added soberly, but even he stood obliquely as if readying for an attack.

"Enough of this. Armand?" Felix asked their leader, who nodded.

She braced herself for the assault, and was quick enough to snatch her severed arm from midair after Felix's halberd's strike and return it to its socket. The surprise this produced gave her enough time to scramble for the edge of the roof. But a hand on her ankle tightened like a vise and dragged her backwards, and Armand's retreating back was the last thing she saw before the entire coven swarmed and her head came off.  
  


* * *

Two weeks later, Armand found Nicki sprawled bonelessly and insolently across the divan in the coven master's office. The top of his shirt was loose and his blue waistcoat was unbuttoned, and his lips were slack as his head was tilted backwards, his mouth open slightly as he dozed.

After Armand's exploratory journey to Calais to learn of Eleanor's background, he had raised the alarm in the entire theatre when he discovered she was Nicki's chaperone the night of Armand's return. Terrified that a vampire with her powers and fanatical history gone wrong would eventually exercise the absolute judgment of their kind that the coven had long delayed with Nicki, he tracked them down without stopping for anything, relying on Eleni and Felix to round up the rest.

It had made his blood run cold to see Nicki's broken body flung on that rooftop, ready for the sun, with no way to seek help or save himself. He did not care what happened to Eleanor or who saw his tenderness towards Nicki. He was the only one he would trust with Nicki's safety. No doubt the coven would exact what vengeance they desired if Armand gave them free reign, and that he was only glad to do, leaving the carnage behind him as he hurried back to the theatre with his treasure. Whatever trouble Nicki might cause, they felt a fierce protectiveness towards him against all outsiders who visited. They all knew his inevitable fate should he be left alone to fend for himself.

Armand huffed to himself and gently kicked at Nicki's stockinged legs. He had not left Armand's side or the theatre since that night. They had to bring him sustenance when they could, and unfortunately, the others were rather spoiling him in granting his unusual requests.

"Hmm..." mumbled Nicolas, stirring and sitting up, only to slouch languidly in the divan and look up at Armand. His face was flushed and his pupils looked fully blown out. He reached up with elegant fingers almost imploringly, to ask for an embrace.

"Bon soir," Armand said politely, though every inch of him wanted to ravish Nicki as he was now, vulnerable, obviously high, and so needy for Armand. "What was it tonight? A pair of drunkards? Opium chasers? Both?"

Nicki giggled, much to Armand's chagrin, and took Armand's limp hand, nuzzling it with his freshly fed face, teeming hot with blood. There was no feeding on Nicki in this state, not if Armand wanted to lose his carefully crafted control as well. But as Nicki began to lave Armand's fingers with small delicate licks of his tongue, searchingly and blindly, he was sorely tempted, a spike of desire and arousal shivering through him.

He permitted Nicki to pull him down to join him, accepting his tender kisses that lingered and trailed heat signatures on his neck and cheeks. Nicki nuzzled up against him, pressing his body close, every inch of him cleaving to Armand as closely as possible.

He gave a desperate whine as his fingers wrapped around Armand's ribs, his obvious erection unsatisfied. "Armand..." he nearly begged, his nose nudging Armand's neck and making him shudder with desire.

"What is it?" Armand asked softly, stroking Nicki's cheek and shivering when Nicki turned his head to suck in his thumb, his tongue swirling as he sucked on it obscenely. "You must tell me what you desire, Nicki."

"You," Nicki giggled as he released Armand's thumb. His nimble fingers traveled downwards to cup the bulge in Armand's trousers, and he tried very hard not to jump. "This." Nicki looked at him then, his sober brown eyes enormous and his pupils large and visible. "You know what I truly desire. But give me what you'll give me."

"And what is that?" Armand asked as he quickly pulled Nicki's waistcoat off and then his shirt over his head. He laid the violinist over his lap and stripped him of his breeches in one lightning quick motion, then his stockings as well, so that Nicki moaned, writhing seductively in his arms, dizzy from how quickly Armand had flipped him and how his naked body felt to be rutting against Armand's lap.

"Fuck me so hard I'll scream," Nicki gasped, as Armand knead the flesh of his buttocks and cupped his balls gently. "Drive me into the bed so I still feel it tomorrow. Take what you want. Just make me feel it. Pl..." He stopped, just short of begging, and Armand, furious that there was always that core of Nicki that no desperate neediness or manipulative control or bargaining or terror could break, brought his hand hard down on Nicki's buttocks.

The slap was loud and he relished in Nicki's small cries as he walloped him a few more times so his cheeks were red and sore and sensitive. The violinist jerked and writhed in his lap, his erection desperate to gain purchase on something, but Armand held his legs wide so it could touch nothing, and Nicki's wrists behind his back so he could not pleasure himself. When a mere brush of air could bring a mix of a sob and a moan of pleasure from Nicki's lips, he stood, hefting Nicki's limp and languid figure over his shoulder. He carried him to the office bedroom, the same one where he'd recuperated after Nino's death, shedding clothes quickly along the way with a vampire's speed.

Nicki gave a gasp and then a moan of pain and pleasure as Armand flung him onto the bed, his sensitive skin stimulated and soothed by the silken sheets. He was hard and wanting and he grinned wolfishly when he saw that Armand was in the same state. The opium still had him, though, and he stretched his arms out to welcome Armand with such innocence that the coven master stored the sight away in his memory.

"Come and take me," Nicki coaxed, looking debauched with flushed lips and swollen cock, lying in the center on Armand's bed. "Can you imagine how good you must feel inside me, filling me up?"

"I want to ruin you," Armand told him.

Nicki stretched languidly, his cock bobbing in invitation. Armand crawled over him so he was straddling Nicki's chest. The violinist raised his head and chuckled low at the moan that escaped Armand as he swallowed the coven master's cock whole. With great relish he sucked on the shaft and then with special attention to the head, eliciting small sounds of pleasure from Armand. He pulsed his tongue against the glans ferociously until Armand backed away in the manner of a startled horse, unable to grasp how this fledgling could make him lose control so easily.

He lay down on the bed alongside Nicki, spooning him and pressing kisses along his hot skin. With one hand he grabbed both wrists and held them before Nicki discovered the cloth Armand had tied around his balls and his cock, restraining them from orgasm.

With little warning, Armand lifted Nicki's leg and thrust into him from behind, relishing the cry of pleasure and pain from his prostate and his sensitive buttocks.

"You do feel good," Armand said to him as he thrust powerfully, making Nicki's body jerk with each push.

Nicki's breath hitched whenever Armand's cock struck his prostate, but he could not turn to rub his straining cock against the sheets for even a little relief. Armand mouthed his neck and his shoulders, drawing moans of pleasure from him as he tilted his head back to meet his lips.

"Untie me," Nicki begged, and gave a loud groan as Armand sank deep inside him and gave shallow thrusts, releasing his leg so he could reach around and pump Nicki's straining, stiff erection viciously. "Mon Dieu! Let me finish..." he croaked.

"Not when you feel so good. Why not delay your pleasure a little longer? You have enough opium to tide you over," Armand said cruelly, fangs grazing Nicki's neck. Nicki had broken out into a blood sweat, his brows beautifully knitted as he bit his lip, his face flushed as he writhed and pressed against the bed and Armand and thrust his hips forward into Armand's hand and backwards onto Armand's cock, practically dancing. But Armand's ties were firm and Nicki would not reach his climax until they were loosened.

"No more drunks," Armand huffed, his thrusts rougher and more erratic. Nicolas gave a shout, then a panicked, frantic whine as the ties on his cock and balls would not allow him to orgasm. He made a frustrated, desperate sound, tossing his head and arching his neck to meet Armand's kisses even as he was jolted by Armand's jabs.

"No more opium addicts," Armand added, pressing down and squeezing the head of Nicki's cock cruelly. The tears began to spill from his eyes, and he tossed his head in desperation.

"You don't rule my habits," Nicki growled, only to moan at the increase in speed of Armand's hand on his cock, bringing him towards a second false and empty shadow of an orgasm without ever permitting him to climax. He broke down sobbing, and Armand gave over to his own climax, thrusting hard into Nicki with a soft groan. He rested his cheek against Nicki's back, his hand absently wrapped around Nicki's rock hard cock, squeezing occasionally.

"I love you," Armand said, grabbing a nearby candle and replacing his cock with it in Nicki's anus as he withdrew, stoppering his fluids inside. He jerked it upwards, eliciting a sudden gasp from the curled figure. He trailed kisses down Nicki's back and continued pumping his cock, bringing him to the crest time and time again but never allowing him to spill over.

A half hour later, Nicolas writhed wildly against him, an animalistic need driving him to seek friction against every part of Armand he could reach, the occasional jabs of the candle driving deep groans from him. Blood sweat plastered his hair to his forehead and the sheets were pink with his struggles. His cock was a deep purple, swollen and suffering, and his face was streaked with blood tears.

"Lem'come," Nicki whispered in exhaustion, incoherent, his head lolling and his body blindly undulating between Armand's hand around his cock, never ceasing in its now-painful ministrations, and Armand's body, neither of which offered comfort. He did not even notice that his hands were now free, for he clenched and fisted them in the sheets and scrabbled for an anchor against the overwhelming sensations."I just...I have to...oh God, Armand, I can't, I have to come, I can't go on!"

And still, "please" would not issue from those lips.

"Do you want to come?" Armand asked him.

"Armand...yes," Nicolas whispered forlornly.

By now hard again, Armand removed the candle and drove his cock back into Nicolas, then pulled the tie around his balls loose. The violinist came with a stuttering shout. His body spasmed and jerked uncontrollably as his cock spurted blood semen over the sheets. His back arched so sharply and violently that it seemed his limbs were limp in contrast, his spine thrusting him forwards. His eyes rolled up in his head, his mouth open and slack as he could not stop coming, his anus becoming pleasurably and almost painfully tight as it contracted around Armand's cock, making him groan and drawing a second climax from him. He clung to Nicki's shaking body as he came, feeling the tightness of the muscles as Nicki's body strained to come again and again. It pushed Nicolas beyond thought, and his gaze was sightless, his body and hands limp when Armand pulled out and released him.

He planted kisses on Nicki's chest and then plundered his mouth, relishing how he yielded completely, looking up at him with half-lidded eyes of exhausted sexual fulfillment. Occasionally Nicki's cock would give another empty jerk at the slightest disturbance, and he cried out when Armand flicked at the over sensitive tip.

With his hands curled, his limbs pliant and loose, his hair tousling around his face every time his back arched into another climax that made him grind into the bed in desire and gasp in pain at the same time, his almost childlike lips open in wonder and reddened with Armand's kisses, Nicki was the very image of seduced, debauched, and ruined innocence.

He looked up at Armand in his tortured state, and though he would never beg with his lips, his eyes pleaded for his master's embrace.

"I need..." he began to utter, reaching up with heavy, tremblingly weak limbs to wrap his arms around Armand's neck and try to pull him down. It was all the encouragement Armand needed to treat him tenderly in his submission, embracing him, lifting him to his chest, cradling him slightly as his head and limbs fell back, for he had no energy left, tilting his head back gently and finally breaking the pulsing vein at his neck. He could hear Nicki's sigh of contentment, and marveled at how this one fledgling could both frustrate and command him without even scheming with half his mind intact to do so. For all his seductive beauty and passion, surely Nicolas would just be another tiresome madman with the passing of the years? At that thought, he clutched Nicki closer, but too late did he recognize the taste of drugged blood.

And without even noticing they were on a gondola, he'd know the pitch of the water anywhere and Nicki was sitting opposite him looking out of place in his clothes made from the Age of Light while Armand...he looked down, seeing the doublet and the hose of the Renaissance and realized his error.

Nicki smiled at him faintly, looking confused to be here and to see Armand like this.

Armand drew back, horrified to have someone else invading his innermost thoughts, his private space. Never had Nicki entered where Armand for decades had permitted no one to trespass.

Before he could react, they passed under a bridge and near a festival square, where music played, the balalaika and the lute and all manner of string instruments and woodwinds. Nicki rose wordlessly, captivated, and Armand lunged forward to grab his wrist. He was too late to stop him from jumping onto the landing and joining the dead festival of the arts.

"Amadeo," someone called in greeting, and then "Andrei! Andrei!," and Nicolas was turning from the gleaming instruments played by dancing skeletons wearing the skin masks of the apprentices among huge lush paintings set on easels and paper lanterns and Armand knew what the violinist would see standing behind him. "Amadeo, come back to us." "Amadeo, the Master has left you this." Armand did not want to face them, not before Nicki. Heart pounding, he took Nicki by the arm and hurried him to a side alley as the music and the scene fell away and they were in the lush garden of a Venetian courtyard, bathed in moonlight passing through the latticework.

Armand sat down on the stone bench at the center of the courtyard beneath the arbor, fear and panic gripping him tightly and dizzying him. Why was Nicolas here? How could Nicolas be here? The scent from the flowers was lush and overpowering and it surrounded them, but Nicolas had paid no notice to their surroundings, not to the delicate rose petals that reminded Armand of long-denied and forgotten silks and taffeta and the unreal colors that his master had seemed to produce. Instead he stood looking at Armand with his head cocked to the side as if seeing him for the first time.

There was no sarcasm or malice in Nicki's expression, and if he understood how vulnerable Armand was, no, not precisely vulnerable, rather how much damage he could do to Armand here, he gave no hint of it. His expression was suffused with a strange compassion he had never seen on Nicki's countenance before. It pained him to see it there, and his insides roiled as Nicolas walked to him and gently, with those nimble fingers, turned his face upwards and kissed him on the mouth very tenderly.

"I forgive you," Nicki whispered in the shell of his ear, before a thunderclap sounded. They both looked up as a storm broke over their heads and the rain began to slam down, plastering their hair and their clothes to their skin. "Why do you weep?"

Armand stared at him, feeling powerless as the thunderstorm continued, and he felt like he had been holding back a dam for too long.

"I do not," he ground out through his fangs, for the rain was clear and he had no tears of blood nor salt.

Nicolas looked up, closing his eyes against the rain briefly, feeling the droplets land on his face and slide down in rivulets into his collar. It was a steady rain, not harsh or sharp, but with the force and energy to go on forever. Nicki opened his eyes again to look knowingly back down at Armand. He looked infinitely sad and too young.

"I love you," he said, cupping Armand's cheek tenderly. "It is all right. I can see you now. I'll love you always."

Shot through with pain, Armand clutched the lapels of Nicki's coat as if he would be washed away, feeling mortal and lost and too much. That was always the problem with Nicki, there was no control with him. With Armand.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and Nicki's arms came up to hold him--

  
Armand wrenched away violently, and Nicki fell away back onto the bed with a languorous sigh. He had not even tried to latch onto Armand's thoughts, so undone was he by the drugs and the repeated orgasms. Armand had pulled him in all on his own. How did Nicolas always drive him to lose control?

"Andrei," Nicki whispered, only half-conscious as he reached for him. "My Amadeo. Beloved."

Without thinking, Armand dealt him a heavy blow across the face that caused him to yelp and huddle backwards, shying instinctively away from Armand. Confounded and confused, Armand sat back on his heels, trying to curb the instinct to kill Nicki now and be rid of the evidence, to eliminate yet another source of his painful past, to forget it all again. For lack of anything to do, he struck Nicolas again, who drew up into a ball to shield himself, but he was exhausted, and Armand didn't have the heart to do more than bruise his ribs before he fell back again in frustration and agony. How could that have happened? What was he to do?

"Beloved...of God," Nicki whispered in French from behind his own arms, raised up to shield his face. He gave a bitter laugh to himself at his translation. "What a lie." He rested his eyes against the curve of his elbow, only to have his wrists grabbed and pinned on either side of him.

"Will you bring me to force you to forget what you saw and heard?" Armand asked, straddling him again.

Instead of the fear or the hatred or the derision he had expected, he could not bear the strength of what he saw on Nicki's face now: pity. It was nothing he could manipulate, seduce, kiss, strike, abuse, torture, or bribe away.

"Shh. I won't leave," Nicolas promised him, his eyes wide and his brows raised. "And you know what that oath will mean for a mad thing like me." He smiled what Armand recognized as his mad smile, and inquired, "Don't you, little Andrei?" He twisted his wrists, wincing a little at the bruising Armand's hands caused on them, and at his sensitivity whenever he brushed up against Armand from below.

Armand slammed downwards on top of him in answer, causing him to gasp out, breaking off into a low moan at the renewed sensation. He lifted himself off the mattress, only to be pushed downwards again and ground into the sheets, as requested earlier. Nicolas gave a high pitched whine, helpless to stop him. Armand's hands found their way around Nicki's throat and began to squeeze, his face a mask of fury and pain and terrible to behold.

"Ghhgk," Nicki tried to say, limbs flailing, too weak from earlier to even scratch at Armand's hands. His eyes bulged as he struggled to breathe, and he frowned at his lover in genuine confusion, but not in fear or pain, for such treatment from Armand was as familiar to him now as a caress or a kiss and he took it in due order. Armand had trained him for years now, after all.

"You'll never repeat what you saw and you'll never call me by those names," Armand told him earnestly, his eyes alight with an eerie wickedness. He increased the pressure on Nicki's throat, watching as his eyes began rolling in his head. "Understood?" He felt a twitch of muscle beneath his fingers, as if Nicki were trying to nod, and released him.

With rapid actions, as Nicolas choked and sputtered and coughed, Armand rose from the bed and dressed himself. The drugs had worn off in what little blood he had taken from Nicolas, and he wanted to feed and clear the night's events from himself. Nicki looked shaken, curled up on the bed and hugging his knees to his chest as he stared at Armand. He had no opiates to deaden his despair and now he looked hollow.

"Get dressed. We're going out," Armand told him.

"I don't want to go out," Nicolas said immediately, sitting up in alarm.

"You're going out. You need more blood and no one has time to bring it to you," the coven master commanded. "If you're afraid that Eleanor Singleton is still out there, she's left. We were highly persuasive." In truth, she'd been torn to pieces and then scattered at sunrise. It did them no good to encourage Nicki in thinking that his word had any coin, lest he send them after anyone who might displease him or even, in his madness, on a mere whim.

Nicolas said nothing, but he rose, gingerly and on shaky legs, for Armand had reamed him in two and he was truly exhausted, and pulled on his discarded clothing. He did it distractedly, unable to pull his stockings up, and finally Armand swatted his hands aside and he stood with docile, half-lidded eyes as Armand dressed him so that he at least looked sensible. How was it that Nicolas was so easily distracted? He grabbed an old forest green coat and shoved it through Nicki's arms a little more roughly than he intended.

"Come," Armand said, turning without looking to see if he followed.

"Eleni says we need more paste for the sets," Nicolas ventured to say as he followed Armand out of the theatre and into the streets. Armand did not fail to notice how his eyes darted around as if scanning for threats, or how he pressed on the bruises on his wrists absently. The cravat hid the ones around his throat, and Armand hoped that once he fed they would disappear, and that would have to be soon. Nicki looked like he was barely able to keep up. "And I don't like this new rosin we are using. We should go back to the old supplier."

"The old supplier is dead," Armand told him very matter-of-factly as they walked on the main boulevard.

"What?" Nicolas asked in surprise. "I used him when I was a student."

"He is dead," Armand said, and shrugged. "Old age." He cursed himself then, when Nicolas backed away and started pacing the sidewalk, throwing his hands in his hair in dismay.

"How? How could he be?" he asked in shock to no one, but he drew stares from passers by. "M'sieur Prescaux is dead! Why did no one tell me? Why wasn't I told? I could have, I could. . ."

"What could you have done?" Armand demanded, stopping him with a touch on the elbow and throwing a quick arm around his shoulders, forcing him to keep pace with his walk.

"I would have turned him, he knows string instruments, he could be our in-house, I would- -" Nicolas began excitedly.

"You would not!" Armand told him sharply. "You shall not grant any person the gift without the permission of the entire group! And that you shall never receive!" And when Nicki opened his mouth to protest, he added, "we would have another Nino?"

"Fuck you and your rosin," Nicolas told him hatefully as he pushed him away with words full of poison. "Get a different supplier or find someone else to compose.” He turned and vanished into the crowd.

Armand cursed silently. He had momentarily forgotten that while the Dark Gift had granted Nicki few unusual gifts, that was one ability that it had decided to bestow, and he used it scarcely enough that few knew he had it at all. Whether he did it consciously or not was hardly the point--no one knew how to find him when he chose to exercise the option.

Armand tried not to wonder why Nicki never resorted to it even when under extreme duress and pain. He disappeared in extreme terror, that was how Armand had discovered the fledgling's talent, puzzling him at first, and in anger, or possibly simply when he had a will to leave and storm off. But under the direst cruelties, Nicolas had only ever briefly flickered in and out of Armand's vision. Had he trained him so well? Was Nicki secretly waiting for Lestat? He didn't dare hope that Nicki stayed for him, Armand, who had picked him and him alone as the focus of all his little attentions.

He sought out Nicki's thoughts, knowing it was futile. He had never been able to do it reliably before, not for that chaotic wasteland, that oftentimes terrifying Charybdis that Armand shrank from in its most frenzied moments. An ever present reminder of eternity.

It was still early in the evening, and their lovemaking had not taken so long as Nicolas must have felt he endured. There was no danger yet of the sun. Armand fed quickly, then began with Nicki's usual haunts. He could not have returned to the theatre. He was not at his usual inn or cafe, the few that had not banned him for creating a disturbance. He was not at his little bridge underpass over the river. He was not even in the gardens, though Armand had never seen him there before. At a loss, he sat down on a stone bench and thought.

Nicolas had left him in a cold sort of rage. The last thing they argued over was working the Dark Trick on M'sieur Prescaux. In alarm, he headed for their current rosin supplier, only to find that he was well, and far from being torn apart by an angry violinist. He bid his farewell and stepped back onto the street, puzzled. There was not a current of terror or a mob running in any direction to lead him to a spectacular breakdown. Normally Nicki didn't care what kind of panic he set off, and it was easy enough to follow the screaming and the blood and prepare for a coverup. The violinist accepted that being found was inevitable, and indulged his mad impulses for as long as he was able. Tonight, Nicolas did not intend to be found. He was deliberate in his stealth.

Armand asked Nicki's usual booksellers if any of them had seen him pass by tonight. He received evasive answers to his face and disapproving ignorance when he searched their minds. What had Nicolas said to them about their relationship, about the theatre? He even went to the Sorbonne, to no avail.

A terrifying thought struck him then. What if Nicolas truly intended to leave? Armand had never quite considered that Nicki would seek to escape, as desperate as the coven master sometimes left him. For the first time ever, Nicolas had spoken of leaving, of no longer serving as the theatre’s composer! He had thought Nicolas had been trained into a perverse dependency on Armand, planted in him when he was still mortal in the bowels of Les Innocents. Armand was the punishment and the reward that Nicolas had always thought his guilt deserved. He was the only Justice in Nicki's twisted world, was he not? The power that this gave the coven master over him was delicious and absolute and had so much latitude that sometimes Armand found himself having to curb Nicki's fall.

There were any number of places Nicki could have gone for passage out of Paris. Hired horses, coaches, stolen or hitched rides. Armand knew Nicolas had been an intelligent young student in Paris once, and somewhere inside he still carried an awareness of the resources this era offered.

But Armand did not.

In his desperation he resorted to flashing against the minds of mortals around him until he found a passing glimpse of Nicki, someone who had seen or barely noticed him in the corner of their eye. It brought him through a nighttime market and a stagecoach ticket seller, as he feared, but it did not end there. It brought him to the back door of the opera house, and he slipped in and sought out the presence of an immortal in the place.

The performance for the evening was something new, no doubt something Nicolas had come to see. Armand slunk through backstage, ducking among props and past crewmen who ignored him, but could not sense Nicolas there. He descended further, trying to trace the scent and feeling of Nicolas somewhere in the building. Through long and dark corridors he wound, until he came to an open doorway from which candlelight spilled into the dark hallway. There was a secret political meeting in the basement, with the performance carrying on directly above. Armand slipped silently into the room and hid in the back. Nicolas was sitting tidily among the other young men in perfect imitation of the passionate and earnest student he had once been. He was perched on a box of stage supplies, his clothing in order much as Armand had dressed him, his curling hair silken and glowing in the candlelight. He rested his chin on his hand thoughtfully, his elbow digging into his upraised knee as his shoe wedged itself against another box. Like others, he was attentively listening to a fiery young man with blond hair and furrowed brows expostulate about the Rights of Man.

Armand was bemused. He had not known Nicolas to be very interested in politics. And he would not have expected him to seek refuge in a place like this in a fit of rage or even spite. Certainly he was a useful consultant for these times--Nicolas was by no means stupid, and the circles he tended to frequent were thick with debate and idle prattle of this sort. But to seek out a secret meeting of a political club? He searched the minds of the mortals around him, grateful that he could do so undisturbed and that Nicolas had not yet noticed him, transfixed as he was by the passionate speaker, who was clearly their leader. Ah, this little side group of the Amis de la Verite, how unusually exclusive for their cosmopolitan organization. And he had not known Nicolas to be- -Çno, he thought, and inwardly, he smiled. Of course Nicolas was this much of an idealist. How else could he have been so broken?

The leader stepped down to raucous shouts of agreement, and shoved his way to an actual chair. When Nicolas handed him a bottle of wine, Armand did not miss the way their fingers touched or their eyes met.

"Bonneville doesn't know what he's talking about."

Armand turned to the whisperer with a raised eyebrow. A young man with baby fat still clinging to his cheeks was looking with disquiet at the new speaker who had taken the stand and shaking his head.

"Is that Bonneville?" Armand whispered back in the tones of an innocent bystander.

"No," said the man, looking at him suspiciously. "Are you new?"

"First meeting," Armand said quickly. "I came with a friend."

"I am visiting from the Cordelier Club myself," he replied, relaxing. "Pierre Chaumette."

"You may call me Armand," was all he would offer in reply, with a nod, which was not out of place if he were new and wished to hide his identity. Chaumette respected it. "So who is this speaker tonight?"

"Some English fraud. His French is terrible, no? He's new to the city but he called this private meeting and he has a right to share his feeble views. My confederates would laugh in his face," Chaumette said. "He speaks well, though, which is why they enjoy hearing him talk, even if they do not listen. If given a pen and a cause, he would be useful."

"As with many fools," Armand agreed. They shared a look of understanding. "Why do you think him weak?" A neighbor shushed them, and they bowed their heads.

"He wants to join les Amis, and therefore adores M. Bonneville, who thinks we can have a universal republique of scholarship. He deceives himself in thinking it's possible without giving up the shackles of religion, the true enemy of reason and the progenitor of despotic blood that must be bled like leeches from this country," Chaumette finished, looking a little huffy. "Forgive me. If I were not studying medicine, my landlady would have thrown me out already. Not many Christians take kindly to being called enemies of reason."

"It is brave of you to say so," Armand replied quietly, thinking of Savonarola as the speaker pounded fist against hand passionately.

Nicolas was looking at the mortal with a kind of strange hunger that Armand had not seen in him before except before a kill, and he wondered if the blond hair meant anything. He sat on the edge of the circle of boxes and trunks and while he was surrounded by his fellows in comparable quality of dress and youth, in Armand's eyes his vampiric qualities easily highlighted his natural gifts in the candlelight and made him glow. He was surprised the vampire did not feature more prominently in the minds of the others, but such was their attention and focus on the Cause.

The speaker stepped down from the box and shoved into a seat beside Nicolas, who made room for him with feigned nonchalance. It was immediately apparent that the young man was highly aware of Nicolas' presence, and cast him sidelong glances every so often as a new speaker took up the soapbox.

"Who is that fellow beside him?" Armand asked Chaumette with light curiosity.

"In the green coat? That's de Lenfent. He's been with them for a while, though you don't see him often at meetings anymore. He has spirit--you should see some of his plays. For his day job he writes for a theatre on the Boulevard du Temple. A few are sublime but it is the ones where he calls for the blood of the monarchy and the church that interest me," Chaumette said with a wry smile, a hint of fondness in his voice. "Mm, he's too occupied with his art to join the enrages wholly. But by Reason, he is sharp!"

"You enjoy arguing with him?" Armand smiled to think of Nicolas having a "day job" as Chaumette described it. Mortals bloodthirsty for their masters. Nicolas was a child of his age, wasn't he?

"He breathes sarcasm. He's still wounded from losing his faith, you see," Chaumette said confidingly, as if this were an adolescent phase. "He thinks that will make it hurt less."

"He does not look well," Armand remarked, for indeed, Nicolas had not fed since their fight, and he looked pale and drawn. The drinking had thinned him when he was made and fortunately it had only tightened and heightened his fine, delicate features. But when he thirsted, it had the effect of making him look gaunt.

Chaumette made a noncommittal noise. Of course. Armand was an outsider. He had learned enough of Nicolas' radical political views and what qualities he held that spoke more of Chaumette than himself. But for the medical student to say much of Nicki's personal history to a stranger was beyond acceptable.

"Do you think we should--" Armand began, and was stopped by Chaumette's hand on his elbow.

"Leave him be. He looks better than when he would drown himself in drink," the young man cautioned with some finality. Armand drew images from his mind of a stormy young student who burst through everyone's expectations of the provinces with his intellect and his wit. But then, later, Nicolas, dressed in his finery as if it were a travesty, hugging a bottle of wine in the corner as he listened to the others at the meeting. Resting his head against the glass. Some of the others dragging him to bed, or to a safer place, or to a coach. Drunken railing in the night about God and witches and the Devil, about Black Masses and the superstition of social class. Sometimes they'd find him passed out on the table and they would have to pluck the knife out of his limp hand. If he didn't have a job, they suspected his self-hatred and anger would have found a certain end before now. And then it had stopped, and he was gone for a while, and then he was back, quiet and a little unsettling, too-bright eyes and too-quick movements, his mode of speech rapid and nervous in its speed and haste, though it had no less of his former self in it. No one asked what had happened. No one had to wrest bottles or knives from him or stop him from almost killing himself anymore.

The next speaker ended, and someone who must have been the secretary of their little group spoke up. "Everyone back to their seats. There's just one more act of the opera. Fifteen minutes at a time. You know the drill."

"Why do you meet in secret?" Armand finally asked Chaumette. It was not impossible for political clubs to exist, the social climate being what it was now.

But Chaumette had turned away and was talking to someone else in one of the small plenary discussion groups that had broken out.

Armand sought out Nicolas in the crowd, and found him arm in arm with the blond ingenue, talking with some other young men. A stab of jealousy pierced Armand and he felt foolish. Nicolas looked lit by some inner fire and he had a wry smirk on his face as he spoke, no doubt something scathing and witty. The blond was looking at him as if he were a deity or avatar made flesh. His conversation partners looked self-satisfied and Armand suspected he had said something that was droll, self-congratulatory, and self-derogatory all at once. It was laughably obvious that they were enthralled, albeit unintentionally, by Nicki without even his intent or knowledge.

"So we must have full land reform. Equitable distribution of wealth means nothing if your illiterate peasantry is still groveling at illiterate lords in crumbling castles," Nicolas was saying. It jarred Armand to be reminded of what Nicolas once was, what he had once been capable of, and how rarely he escaped from what the Gift had made him. And from what Armand had made him, down in the depths of Les Innocents.

"There is a range of practicality," a youth in a dark brown coat, much like Nicolas' cutaway, replied. "It is easy enough for you to draft legislative decrees but--"

"You underestimate the range of palatable policy the people find acceptable," Nicolas said. "A regime shift of the scale we are contemplating means there is space and willingness for the public to be taught and to learn a new paradigm of ownership."

"And for religion as well? They just seized the Church lands and you can't tell me you haven't heard more than enough sans-culottes hedging on that."

"What?"

"Oh piss, how long have you been in Paris, Hembroke? Sans-culottes. Church lands. Excommunication."

"Oh."

"Did you understand that?"

"Nick, you speak English, don't you? Translate for him?"

"Yes, but I am enjoying this too much."

"M'sieur de Lenfent, please, take pity on me," the blond man said in English.

"It is the same debate over what the public is ready for," Nicolas told him patiently in English. He nodded at the other two, who were already being drawn into a separate conversation. "Let's go back. I did want to see what this opera was about anyway."

Armand waited an interval and followed them upstairs, past the dark hallways and curtained rooms until they slipped through the door of the private box they had reserved for the opera. He hesitated, then scolded himself and followed into the vestibule. It was dark and there were two chairs and a long trunk for storing programs and sundries. He could hear the prima donna's death aria outside beyond the curtain. He was not certain what he would do yet, as he waited and listened to her song, the notes rising and spiraling. He had not caught the name of the composer but he thought it a pity he had not heard the rest of the performance.

Silently, he peeked past the curtain. Nicolas and the one they called Hembroke were alone in the small box. Hembroke was whispering in Nicolas' ear, his arms on either side of Nicki's lap as he leaned sideways against him. Nicolas seemed to be paying him no mind, distractedly pushing him--to not much effect and with not much effort--at the chest away, as he tried to listen to the aria. He was transfixed, as he always was, with the music, and he did not heed Hembroke's attentions. Armand could hardly withstand the delicious anger he felt at this kind of pawing, and he let it fester as he watched Nicolas nudge Hembroke's face away distractedly even as the mortal sought to kiss him.

It moved him beyond thought for a moment, and he glanced down at the long trunk beside him. It was unlocked, and upon inspection, empty, about large enough for a child, or an adult folded up and contorted.

Counting on Nicolas to be hypnotized and the theatre to be dark enough with the curtains drawn the way Hembroke had them, the lout, Armand slunk from the shadows and yanked the mortal backwards with scarcely a sound.

The struggle was quick and Armand subdued him in seconds, though the man was taller and stouter. Having made sure he was breathing but unconscious, Armand folded him up neatly in the trunk, then locked it.

He joined Nicolas in the box just as the aria was ending.

"What are you doing here?" Nicki hissed angrily. He did not ask where the mortal had gone.

"I gave you time. Now that time is over," Armand said very simply. "I have a gift for you."

"Why? Where?" Nicolas asked warily, the opera forgotten.

"What is this called?" Armand asked, looking suddenly at the stage.

"Never mind, what do you mean a gift?" Nicolas demanded, eyes darting over Armand's face, trying to read him.

"I made a promise to you. When we first met, do you remember?" Armand said lightly, relishing the way Nicolas swallowed nervously and his eyes unfocused at the memory.

"Of course," Nicolas said faintly, but his voice cracked.

"I am always finding ways to fulfill the promise, Nicki," Armand told him gravely, as he rose and led him by the hand with a grip that could not be refused.

A sound was rising from Nicki's throat, that ceaseless wordless humming that filled the spaces between outbursts when he had his rants and fits. He was terrified.

"Give me your coat and waistcoat," Armand instructed. Nicolas stared, then took them off in the vestibule and handed them to Armand. "Lie on your stomach."

Nicolas hesitated, and when he turned to flee Armand shoved him hard against the velveted wall, knocking the breath out of him. He could feel the softness of the threads against his chin and whined when Armand ground his hips against Nicki’s buttocks, demanding his attention.

“What do you think you’re doing, hm?” Armand asked, his impatience and annoyance coming out with a huff in Nicki’s ear. Nicolas struck backwards wildly, sensing this was going to be his last chance at anything close to the escape he had planned and longed for, but he had not the leverage nor the sheer brutal strength, and he felt Armand’s nails digging into either side of his neck where it met the back of his skull. The hand dragged him about, disorienting him, and flattened him to the floor. A wet pink tongue slithered across his cheek and he shuddered in fear as he felt his desperation mounting. He had to try. He couldn’t bear it any longer. But now, now he could tell that Armand was going to be creative.

“Well?” Armand asked as he worked.

His cravat was removed and used to tie his wrists to his ankles so that his body formed a painful, compact arch. He struggled to stay in position, having seen tumblers perform this trick, but his vampire mimicry only went so far. The thirst was tugging at him, and he was weak enough now that he could not break free.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Nicolas pleaded, his voice on the edge of tears. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, trying to calm his grief and terror. “I cannot bear any more, Armand, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I cannot survive this, I promise you.”

“I will decide what you can survive and promise and do for me,” Armand declared, making Nicolas shut his eyes with a groan of frustration. Then, with a soft gasp of laughter like a demonic child, Armand picked Nicolas up by the ties like a basket, then set him down again in humiliation. The violinist did not struggle, trying to gingerly remain as still as possible.

Armand rifled through Nicolas’ pockets, turning the composer roughly around as he searched for anything important that the violinist might have stuffed in them before he left. It wouldn’t do to get any crucial documents bloody. No telling what they might do. His greedy hands snatched at a piece of paper and a set of keys. The keys he pocketed without even thinking, his eyes and heart frozen on the two pieces of paper in his hand.

Tickets of passage. A coach. A ship bound for Egypt. For Cairo. Nicolas was going to leave! He was going to leave Armand! He would abandon Armand and never look back and he was going to go—with an ugly twist of fury on his expression, Armand stamped down with all his might on Nicolas’ back where he lay, grinding his heel into the violinist’s spine and making him writhe like a worm.

“Leave me, would you? Did you think Lestat would be glad to see you? Did you think he might welcome you?” Armand hissed, crouching down by Nicolas’ face. The violinist glanced at the paper he shoved in front of his nose, his mouth gasping with pain. Surely Armand had broken something. He couldn’t feel his hands.

“So he IS in Cairo…” Nicolas said without thinking, hope in his heart. He had thought he’d be free. He had thought, he’d thought he wouldn’t be found here and for a second he had almost believed he would be free and gone and he would write back to Eleni and tell her where to join him and they’d flee on the Devil’s Road together once it was safe and Armand was—was—Truth was, he hadn’t thought that far, really. A stabbing fiery pain chased its way across his face and he smelled blood. Armand had backhanded him with his bejeweled encrusted hand. He clenched his jaw to bear the pain and Armand did it again, forcing a groan from him, then gasped as Armand sank his fangs into his neck and tore the blood in great draughts from his neck, so hard it felt like he was drowning in air, dissolving into Armand’s hunger and anger. The coven master released him and his chin hit the floor, limp and weak.

“You shall never leave me. I see now you are overdue for this lesson,” Armand spat, and despite himself he tried to reach the blood spit, his body reaching for the blood. “I have indulged you far too much. I should have known you required discipline, but let this be a permanent shock to your nerves.” He smiled, and tore the bills of passage clean in half as Nicolas gave a sudden cry of despair, his eyes widening. He had tried so hard! He had struggled and overfed and bitten himself for punishment simply in order to be lucid and sane when Armand was constantly working at him, and he had gotten one ticket somehow and then gotten the money and then gotten the other ticket somewhere and hidden them and hidden them and hidden them and had waited oh so long and hadn’t told anyone!

Armand yanked his hair up, making him hiss in pain, and forced a bloody kiss from his lips, stinging and full of fangs. He groaned in a mix of pain and pleasure, helpless before the onslaught. He’d have to start over again. He’d have to find another way to escape, or, or something! Anything! For a brief moment bittersweet freedom had seemed like something akin to hope and he had thought he could get control of himself enough to start the journey, to go to Lestat, to explain, to talk, to continue the conversation. If only to make sure Lestat was safe, and his family taken care of! Armand had ripped through his dreams, tore up the bill of passage now bloody, and it disappeared into Armand’s pocket along with Nicolas’ hard-won plan. Nicolas rested his forehead against the floor, will draining out of him. He could try again. He could. He was immortal. He gave a giggling sob, choked off by the pain in his back.

He unlocked the trunk, to Nicki's surprise and alarm, and lifted the struggling violinist above the box. He had a full view of Hembroke and the confusion washed over him.

"What--"

"If you are quiet, a week. If you are not, a month," was all Armand said before he dropped Nicolas in, cracking a few ribs, much to Nicki's muffled shouts, shoved at his limbs until they squeezed and fit against Hembroke's, and shut the lid. He locked the trunk and pushed it into the box so Nicolas could still hear the music.

There was a soft thump, and Armand sat down on the trunk. Was it watertight? Airtight? He should probably have checked. He heard voices inside, one frantic, the other surprisingly calm and slow. Hembroke was having the situation explained to him. Disappointingly, thumping immediately began, and Armand was glad the trunk muffled his shouts so well. Abruptly there was a sudden loud thump, and the protests stopped. With some surprise, Armand found a grin spreading on his face.

When the performance was over, Armand dragged the trunk behind him up whatever stairs he could find, then across the rooftops until he dropped down to the street with it. From there, safely away from any accusation of operatic thievery, he sought a good place to leave them.

The safest was an iron coal box on the roof of the local insane asylum, where any overheard screams would be attributed to the patients. It provided an extra layer of protection from the light without giving extra room, and it had a lock besides.

"I have placed you on a rooftop," he said softly. "You have the sky above you. Think on that. I shall return in a week."

In truth, Armand returned every night to check on the two residents. The first night there was bitter argument and shouting, followed by futile attempts at escape. The second night, the incessant humming Armand recognized as the space between fits had started. It was punctuated by occasional angry screams and sobbing from the mortal, and it had no end. The third night, the mortal was very weak, and Armand was surprised to find him still alive. He did not think that in such proximity, Nicolas could resist feeding on him. Surely he would be thirsting. The fourth night, the mortal was dead when Armand arrived. There was no discernible heartbeat from the box and no sound, either, coming from Nicolas. Armand sat for a while and then left. The fifth and sixth nights, he could hear nothing. On the seventh night, he approached the box with his keys, and hesitated even as he touched them to the lock. The box suddenly rocked and he heard his voice frantically called.

He backed away very deliberately, knowing Nicolas could hear his footsteps.

"I said to be quiet," he intoned with a patient smile, and was rewarded by the box's furious rocking onto its side, then again. He heard a gagging sound and then a frustrated growl, and felt the discomfort of remembering what it was like to be trapped with a dead body.

On the ninth night, Armand could hear furious growls and cloth and flesh being torn and bone being crunched. Perhaps Nicolas had freed himself from his ties, but only in desperation. On the fifteenth night, Nicolas had begun sobbing softly, just to himself, nonstop. On the twenty-fifth night, Armand arrived with a bucket of water, soap and lye, and a towel. He also brought a fresh change of clothes and the same waistcoat and coat Nicki had worn at the fight when he had disappeared. The others were wondering about Nicolas. It was time to let him out.

He set these down at a distance and cocked his head to listen. There was no sound at first, and Armand was tempted to wait the full month, only Eleni had been glancing at him with ill-disguised suspicion. He stepped silently towards the box, and stopped suddenly. It was very soft, and weak, and meant for no one but Nicolas in the private hell of his box. He had heard Nicolas' repeated shuddering whisper: "please."

The one core of Nicki he thought he could never reach again, laid bare at his feet!

With what he knew was a saintly smile, he unlocked the coal box triumphantly, then the trunk. The lid did not move, and he cautiously lifted it. The stench of rotting flesh, urine, and feces struck his senses, and he flung the lid wide open. Nicolas lay hugging his knees tightly to his chest. His face was pressed vertically against the wall of the box, but the soup of primordial rot came up to half the chest's height. For a moment Armand wondered where Hembroke was, then realized Nicolas was swimming in him.

Of course. He hadn't been thinking. Putting them in a coal box on the rooftop was like sticking them in a low burning oven. When the inevitable happened and the vampire in Nicolas frenzied, feeding on the mortal and no doubt tearing him limb from limb, then probably dicing him further in any later desperate, Thirst-driven hazes in attempts to feed from a dead corpse, the heat from the outer box cooked the remains, softening them and making it possible to render the mortal down and mix him with the rest of his leavings. Armand would have thought it impossible, but Nicolas had ground him up so finely, not even the bones remained.

"My suffering composer," Armand said softly, relishing how his voice startled Nicolas, who was shivering in shock, staring at Armand without quite seeing him. "Now I know you'll never abandon me again. Much less disappear in the street. Will you? You've come so far." Nicolas squeezed his eyes shut. He had not enough blood for tears.

Armand reached down and plucked Nicki's frail, thin form from the fetid pool. His clothes were in tatters, of course, his hair matted and caked with dried waste. His nimble fingers looked skeletal. Nicolas curled up on the roof where Armand dropped him, and did not move even when the coven master dumped a large barrelful of cold water over him.

Armand tore off Nicki's rags quickly and scrubbed him with the speed and efficiency of an orderly for the mad. The lye probably stung but the soap seemed to give him relief from the smell. Armand's scrubbing was thorough and hard enough that he could have sloughed off a new layer of skin and left him pink if Nicolas were not a vampire. His victim, still in shock, gave no resistance nor revealed any relief at being clean.

"There you are again, come back to us," Armand said soothingly, wrapping Nicolas in a towel and drawing him into his arms because he could not stand. He looked a fright, a haunting shade for children to scream about, a famine victim down to the bone, and only his hair was curly as before. Now that it was clean and dry, it shone in the moonlight. "It's over now, you'll never leave me again," he said soothingly, kneeling with Nicolas clasped to him. He stroked Nicki's blank skeletal face, watching as his nostrils flared at the scent of the approaching mortal Armand had asked to meet on the roof. Nicolas mewled faintly, his eyes fluttering as his entire body inclined weakly towards the scent of blood.

"Please," Nicolas whispered again, deliriously, sending a thrill through Armand as he blindly reached out. He latched onto the mortal's neck, roughly taking as deep a bite as he could. Armand held him as the mortal sank from his knees to a slump against Nicolas, feeling his skin warm and his flesh fill out. He pulled him gently away just before the death, and kissed him on the forehead.

"Isn't that better?" he asked, pleased when Nicki nodded wordlessly, his eyes dull as they gazed at the corpse. "None of this needless suffering, if only you obeyed, isn't it so?"

Nicolas looked at him then, actually focusing on and seeing Armand, and his vision cleared as if he was coming back to himself. His eyes darted back and forth, and shook his head blindly as slowly his blank expression shattered. He clutched at Armand, burying his face in his chest as small, dry sobs shook his body.

"It's all right. It was terrible in there, wasn't it? But I have you now. Only I understand you," Armand murmured, holding him tightly. "This is what you are, what you are destined for. But I can keep you safe from it."

"Thank you, thank you," Nicolas repeated against his shoulder, clinging to any part of Armand he could lay his hands on.

"Ah, my wounded servant," Armand clucked, granting kisses on Nicki's trembling fingers. "But you are safe with me. Tell me you understand."

"Yes, yes, yes," Nicolas whispered frantically, almost eagerly, saturated with fear. "I won't leave. I can't leave. Or I'll, I'll, I'll be lost. I need you. O God, I won't ever leave again. I'll go just where you say."

Armand nodded, satisfied. It had taken much less time with Justine, and he had not wanted to risk setting Nicki on fire.

"Good, mon amour," Armand murmured, petting him, to Nicki's gasping sobs of relief. "Now we are going home. You can tell everyone you have been at the opera, for inspiration. And you'll do as I say, and no one else is to touch you but me, no one else is to have you but me. They'll just bring foolishness and all this needless suffering upon your head." He set him standing on albeit shaky legs, and smiled up at him. "It's for your own good. You are our brilliant genius, our divine violinist, Nicki. But only I really understand the truth of you."

"Yes, of course, I see that now," Nicolas echoed hollowly, fussing with his trembling fingers before sticking them in his old green coat that Armand had brought, as if no time at all had passed. It was even the same waistcoat and shoes. "Thank you for understanding me, Armand." He stared down at his shiny leather shoes and avoided looking at the box, and followed his master home.

  
His quiet and trembling demeanor raised suspicion in all of them, and put Eleni in a high state of alarm. She thought they had a special respect for one another, and that she might be able to serve as a shield or filter against Armand, so that Nicolas might last a little longer. When Nicolas arrived at the theatre behind Armand he seemed hollow, a mere shell, and he looked at her with wild eyes as she asked after him. He was clean and tidy and looked as he had left, which she was ashamed to think was unusual. And then she had grasped him by the shoulders to embrace him and he'd given a choked off shriek, flailing backwards, gasping for air as he flattened himself against the plaster wall.

"Nicolas, what--" she began, and followed his wide eyed stare of terror to Armand, who watched, placid and still as ever. Nicolas was shaking all over, terrified, and with a silent nod, Armand turned his back and walked away.

"Nicolas, please, let me help," Eleni said gently when the coven master had gone, taking one wrist and petting his fingers. He had his eyes squeezed tightly and at her touch he jerked away, staring at her blindly as if he did not know her as anything more than a categorical threat, as he sidled along the wall. "Nicki, what is it? What's wrong?"

"Don't!" He screamed at her, making her stagger back in surprise in the narrow hallway. Doors opened as other vampires peered out curiously. This prompted a nervous, shaky laugh, and his voice was high-pitched and hysterical. "You mustn't touch! Don't touch me!" He had raised one finger demonstratively and was jabbing at his temple. Then he seemed to fall, only he was walking, looking down at the floorboards with his back hunched, his hands twisting against each other as he muttered to himself.

He ignored the vampires he passed in the hall, except for Arthur, who was regrettably blond and sometimes the target of confused deranged ravings as a proxy Lestat. Nicki shoved him back through Arthur's doorway with a hysterical, desperate sound, and fled the last few steps to his own room, slamming the door shut.

"What the bloody hell is wrong with him now?" Arthur muttered as Eleni paused outside his door. "He's never laid hands on me before."

"I want to ask Armand," Eleni murmured.

"Good luck. I doubt you'll get anything out of either of them. Mad, they both are."

"What does that say about you, that you permit one to direct your acting and the other to lead your coven?"

"Oh, that we are all a pack of liars and madmen," Arthur replied blithely. "That we are merely a theatre company, as unique as we are."

Eleni bit her lip, and said nothing. Moments later, in Nicki's room, she was thrown against the wall with surprising strength. She had entreated him to confide in her, or at least take comfort in her supportive presence. He always seemed to sober and calm with her. Now, they looked at each other across his room, nothing but blind terror in Nicki's eyes, and she knew he was somewhere else.

"Nicki, please," she said softly, for he was strong but not enough to hurt her. "What did Armand do to you? Why can't anyone touch you?"

"They can't," Nicolas repeated. After he had thrown off her hand on his shoulder, he had flattened himself to the wall against the corner, as far away from her as possible. He was trembling. "Don't."

"How will we fit you for the costumes and your clothes? What about Felix when he carries you to your coffin?"

"You don't understand," Nicolas laughed in disbelief. He covered his face with his hands and a hoarse, gasping sob escaped him. There was no one left. He had asked for this and it was over, he had nothing but the justice Armand could bring on their island of madness that was the only remedy for the world around them. No one to scream to, no one who would hear and comprehend. No one would ever know. Lestat would never come back and even then he would never understand. He was alone as he had ever been and the darkness closed in around him and withered his heart.

"Nicki? Let me try?" Eleni said tentatively, approaching slowly.

He took his hands away and looked at her and his brown eyes seemed almost black. She took a step back at the look on his face. She had never been afraid of Nicolas, fledgling that he was.

But there had always been a stubborn sensibility stamped on his face that broke through in the worst of his fits. That burning desire to make sense, to reason and argue out of this even when there were no further words to be said and no words to be found in his struggle from mute to mania. She saw it in his quiet moments and in his frenetic manic moments, but it directed his energy and it was nothing more and nothing less than Hope. She could never hope to understand how he could hold fast to it so instinctively even as he writhed in pain within and without, but it was there, in his questioning glances that broke through and the grasping fingers that reached for hers, for any relief.

What she saw on his face made her gulp involuntarily in horror and in despair. He laughed and she fought the sob that rose within her at his smile, for it broke her heart with how splintered and fractured it looked. He was barely holding himself together and the new equilibrium he had found left no room for self-preservation. He had nothing left. Perhaps nothing but whatever black purpose Armand had driven into him.

"Nicolas," she whispered in wonder, as he laughed, low and ceaselessly, bending over in pain and still laughing, unable to stop. "Please, come back to me. I'm here."

He shook his head, still laughing, blood tears running down his face, and when she grabbed him by the shoulders he did not resist or protest or stop, but his knees buckled and he was falling and she laid him on his little cot where he curled up, giving great gasping sobbing laughs that had turned high pitched because he could no longer draw breath.

She brushed against his mind briefly and gasped at the sharpness she felt, those spikes of pain surrounding him and lancing him through. There was no music as there usually was. There was just screaming, constant and sure, a howling that would go on and on.

"What is going on?!" Felix was at the door, and laid eyes on Nicolas. "He's back. What's happened to him?"

"Armand must know," Eleni said gravely, as Nicki's laughs dipped, hoarse and hissing now, unable to stop. He curled around himself in pain and shook his head and covered his mouth with his hands and still he could not stop laughing or shaking and when he rose to dash his brains against the floor in his desperation for any relief Felix grabbed him by the wrists, making him go limp at once.

"Stop it. Nicki, what's wrong?" Felix demanded, as Nicolas writhed and twisted in his grasp and kicked at him, laughing helplessly all the while.

"He doesn't want anyone to touch him. He's terrified of it," Eleni said. "Armand knows something."

"He usually does," Felix said soberly, watching as Nicolas threw himself against his grip without any effect.

"Can you..." Eleni began to say, turning towards the door.

"He is not taxing me the slightest," Felix said patiently, standing like a stone pillar as Nicolas flailed wildly. He enclosed the top of Nicki's head with one hand, trying to hold him in place and stop him from hurting himself. There was no point in beating him into submission. He was not trying to escape. He was only trying to dash his brains out.

"Merci," Eleni said with a nod. She picked up her skirts, which she only did when nervous, and went to find Armand.

She found him in his office going over papers as if a madman was not screaming hoarsely in laughter down the hall when even non-vampires could have heard.

"Bon soir," she said with due politeness and a small curtsy. "How did Nicolas find the opera?"

There was a long silence as Armand put a paper down and made a notation in the accounts books. He loathed the task at times but often he found it soothing in its mindless arithmetic. He looked up at her, folded his hands, and met her gaze steadily.

"Inspirational," he said, his voice that of a boy just entering adulthood.

"Where has he been, Armand? What happened to him?"

"Does something have to 'happen' now, to trigger one of his rants?"

"You--" she stopped herself. Never speak in anger. Not in front of Armand. He could not easily overpower her but she did not want to test that assumption. "It is different this time. This is more than his mania or his fledgling's obsession with his powers and what we are. Something is broken inside."

"Your statement lacks detail and conviction," Armand said with a raised eyebrow. "We both know he is not for long. We saw it in others. They were destroyed."

"You will not destroy Nicki," she said firmly, and it was like telling a truth, or giving a promise.

"And why would I want to do that when he is doing it so well to himself?" Armand asked with a humorless smile. His expression turned grave. "I do the things I do to keep him safe, to keep him close. I bear him the same affection you do. You know his value to the coven, short as it will be. Why would I jeopardize that?"

Because you do not value the coven, not anymore, not since Les Innocents was taken from you, she thought. We could burn and you would walk away as if nothing had ever been shared or built here. Nicki's music, my pirouettes, Marie's grace, Jean Pierre's divine sorrow. It is all still ashes in your mouth even as you wear these fine clothes and shun the cemeteries like any sophisticate of this age. And she closed her heart up tight against him and against this thought, for it was more than she could bear to admit. She knew then that she would leave. She could take Nicki with her, perhaps Laurent. They could go to Naples. Nicolas often spoke of Naples and Rouen and these minor small cities that held some charm for him that he delighted pointing out to her, like a child with a secret treasure.

She shook her head and bowed it, conceding feigned defeat. She might leave, but if she ever gave sign of it, she could never escape with Nicki as well.

But Armand was rising now and if she were a cat her hair would be raised. He passed close to her, almost companionably, as if she were Alessandra and they were like mother and son and brother and sister and father and daughter.

"I will see to Nicolas," he promised her, and when he flashed her that brief smile that was meant more as threat and less as reassurances, she swore she would get Nicki out of there.

She followed him to Nicki's room, where his laughter had subsided into the occasional dry gulping sob. He was back on his cot lying on his back and Felix had tied his wrists to the wooden bars, and was sitting on his legs.

"Tsk," was all Armand said, and Nicolas jerked in fear, eyes swiveling to him. He did not try to escape, but that no longer surprised her. He no longer even attempted it anymore. He fought, often to his own injury, but he had given up on escape from the coven, the theatre, and Armand, long ago.

"S'il..." Nicolas bit his lips, taking shuddering breaths through his clenched teeth, and shook his head, eyes never breaking from Armand. He couldn't bring himself to plea. Still. It irked Armand, but not so much as before when he had heard it on that rooftop, perhaps not at him but at least induced by him.

Armand bent and Nicolas strained to lean upwards into the kiss placed on his clammy sweating forehead. He collapsed backwards when the benediction was granted, his chest heaving with effort. Felix rose from his legs and Nicolas began crying softly, turning towards the wall as much as his bonds allowed. His hands were clenched into claws but his body was no longer taut with nerves.

"He's really..." Felix began to say, then stopped and shook his head. The three of them looked down at the suffering violinist. "What do we do?"

"Leave us," Armand commanded without even looking at them, expecting to be obeyed. When even Felix hesitated, he turned with a quizzical, arched eyebrow.

"We should bring him to a doctor," Felix said, most likely thankful for his height over Armand, though the coven master was intimidating enough.

"Yes, bringing him to medical attention had such a profound effect upon him last time," Armand murmured, to Eleni's chagrin, for Nicolas stiffened and stopped weeping. She could recognize an approaching onslaught and wanted to get out. It was ugly, the way Nicolas' hate could look, the words Nicolas could sling out. She was never entirely sure if all of what he said was true, and even worse, he did not seem to care.

"You killed her," Nicolas seethed, and this time the heat of his expression, unbridled and broken, threatened to drive her from the room. She shivered.

"So quick to find reason in something other than yourself. She was never meant for you or our kind," Armand chided, just out of the reach of Nicki's hands, or so he thought, when Nicolas suddenly tore out of his bindings and wrapped his fingers around Armand's neck, leaping upon him and bringing him to the floor.

Before Armand could react, Nicolas was crushing his throat and his windpipe, and Armand was too surprised to stop him from pounding the back of his head against the wooden floorboards as he throttled him. He reached out with long fingers to throw Nicolas off, but the violinist snapped his fangs at them, keeping them away like a feral animal. His grip faltered when Armand kicked as hard as he could with both feet against his chest, and he was thrown backwards, momentarily stunned against the opposite wall. All too quickly, and with a speed and strength they had not known him to command, he hurtled into Armand, crashing with him through the armoire with a sickening crunch into the wall.

Eleni heard feral snarls and blows delivered with a violence that shook the floorboards beneath her shoes. Armand was emerging from the deep crater of furniture and plaster and wall, bloodied from a cut in his temple and a bruise that was blossoming from his eye to his cheekbone. He looked a little stunned but his expression grew hard when he saw the audience they still had, only to turn to surprise when he was yanked backwards without warning. His hand reached out for the edge of the armoire but she could not make out anything in the tangle of ruined boards, clothing, and papers. Then Armand's hand shook and the fingers turned white in their grip on the wood and she could hear whispering, feverish and low and hateful.

"No!" came a cry from a voice she recognized as Armand's, and she had no time to think on what the anguish in it might mean before she heard a crunch of bone and a choking sound. She and Felix exchanged worried glances and rapidly they picked the boards apart to try to get to where the two combatants had buried themselves. A squelching noise and a desperate guttural cry made them work faster, and they realized Armand had crashed with Nicolas into the other room, hemmed in by wood and plaster like a small artificial cave.

Shards of wood had impaled Nicolas at critical points, pinning him in place like a moth on a board. He was gazing up at Armand with a helpless, pained expression, his eyes enormous and his limbs akimbo and shuddering to move. Armand had torn open his chest and, shoving his hand through bone and skin, wrapped his fingers around Nicki's still heart. The coven master was weeping openly, his expression a mask of blind fury. He looked up and back when Felix and Eleni entered the room, as if breaking from a reverie. He looked the immaculate teenage coven master in black, hands dripping with thick blood. Nicolas' chest was exposed and open, his rib cage cleaved and popped apart, and his vampire powers were keeping him alive and in pain as it struggled to heal. He clenched his teeth, looking up at Armand with an odd kind of satisfaction even though he must have been in great pain. Perhaps he had emerged on the other side in madness.

"Armand!" Eleni cried without thinking, and Felix moved forward a step. Armand released Nicki's heart and stepped backwards, stumbled, and sat down on a broken plank. He put his blood tear streaked face in his bloody hands. Nicolas' breaths were coming in small choking pants, for he was unable to breathe with his lungs and chest cavity so exposed.

"I'm...I'm sorry," Felix said to him as Nicolas watched him carefully, eyes swiveling without moving his head. "For what I am about to do." He pulled a stick of rubber from his pocket and stuck it between Nicki's teeth for him to bite on. It soon became necessary as Felix clumsily grabbed both sides of Nicki's rib cage and tried to push his chest back together. Nicki's screams were muffled by the gag he instinctively bit down on, but Eleni could hear the psychic resonance of it in her head, and no doubt it echoed through the theatre and the surrounding neighborhood. His nails gouged deep bloody lines in what wood his fingers could reach, and still Felix gritted his teeth and shoved the bones back together, holding them in place until the unholy blood Nicki carried could knit them back together. Nicolas' screams quieted into a whimper, and though he had not the energy to weep, little desperate sounds escaped him. Felix supported him until he could stand, and he staggered until it was apparent he did not have the strength to walk on his own. To their surprise, he reached out to Armand with trembling fingers. The coven master looked up, expression blank with a hint of fatigue. He smiled without guile or anger or threat, and sweetly. Standing, he limped to Nicolas and caressed his face though the violinist shied away from his hand. Felix didn't know whether to help or to protect Nicki against Armand. What could have provoked Armand to do this? What had Nicki whispered?

"It is this," Nicolas said to Armand earnestly.

"I don't understand," Armand said, shaking his head and returning Nicki's gaze in curiosity.

Nicolas looked like he had been slapped in the face.

"You! You..." He grimaced and gave a keening sound of pain, putting a hand to his chest. Armand was on his guard, and he blocked Nicki's first, pathetic punch before Felix held Nicki back. "You said! You said! You told me!"

"Armand, what is the meaning of this?!" Eleni demanded, unable to endure this any further. Nicolas was becoming agitated again, when before the pain had quieted him. He was struggling against Felix to reach Armand, but he was so weak, the Thirst pulling at him to heal him, that he barely managed to tap Felix.

"None of your concern," Armand snapped suddenly, keeping his eyes on Nicki. He turned to her with a glare and left without a word.

"He promised! We had a deal!" Nicolas screamed hoarsely, straining against Felix's hold. He thrashed wildly and Eleni grabbed his head to try to calm him and still him. His face was working furiously, his expressions fluctuating between desperation and agony, his teeth clenched or his mouth open in a howl of horror. She kissed his eyelids, then his forehead, then his cheeks.

"I am so sorry you are in such pain, Nicki," Eleni said. He seemed to barely understand her, and she tried a different tack. "What does M'sieur de Lenfent require?"

"Wh...what?" He asked, stilling at once, confused. It was encouraging.

"I wish to assist Monsieur de Lenfent. What does he require?" she asked patiently.

"A...I'm..." The question threw him off guard, to think of himself in third person. "Justice. Order."

Eleni was taken aback. It was not the answer she had expected.

"How can we assist him? What can we do for him?"

"He needs...He needs to be shown what he deserves and what others deserves." A mad giggle escaped him that quickly dissolved into a sob. "He only ever gets one, doesn't he?"

"You don't deserve any of this, Nicki!" Eleni gasped, horrified at the depths of his self-loathing.

"It's good enough," Nicolas replied bitterly, looking up at her through his eyelashes as he hung in Felix's arms, panting with effort from the conversation alone. "The coven master promised. He promised order. He promised." Nicolas bowed his head, shaking it inconsolably. "I made my own bargains. I'll just have to try again."

"Nicki?" Eleni asked uncertainly, and stepped back when Nicolas raised his head and screamed at her wordlessly, nothing but pain and rage howling from his raw throat.

Felix clipped him from behind, catching him as he fell unconscious. The quiet was merciful and Nicki was never so young and innocent as when he was in repose and still.

"What are we to do with him?" Felix asked after they had removed the ruined shirt and tied him bare chested to his little cot again. The wound was bloody and faint and would need more sustenance to heal.

She followed him to Nicki's room, where his laughter had subsided into the occasional dry gulping sob. He was back on his cot lying on his back and Felix had tied his wrists to the wooden bars, and was sitting on his legs.

"Tsk," was all Armand said, and Nicolas jerked in fear, eyes swiveling to him. He did not try to escape, but that no longer surprised her. He no longer even attempted it anymore. He fought, often to his own injury, but he had given up on escape from the coven, the theatre, and Armand, long ago.

"S'il..." Nicolas bit his lips, taking shuddering breaths through his clenched teeth, and shook his head, eyes never breaking from Armand. He couldn't bring himself to plea. Still. It irked Armand, but not so much as before when he had heard it on that rooftop, perhaps not at him but at least induced by him.

Armand bent and Nicolas strained to lean upwards into the kiss placed on his clammy sweating forehead. He collapsed backwards when the benediction was granted, his chest heaving with effort. Felix rose from his legs and Nicolas began crying softly, turning towards the wall as much as his bonds allowed. His hands were clenched into claws but his body was no longer taut with nerves.

"He's really..." Felix began to say, then stopped and shook his head. The three of them looked down at the suffering violinist. "What do we do?"

"Leave us," Armand commanded without even looking at them, expecting to be obeyed. When even Felix hesitated, he turned with a quizzical, arched eyebrow.

"We should bring him to a doctor," Felix said, most likely thankful for his height over Armand, though the coven master was intimidating enough.

"Yes, bringing him to medical attention had such a profound effect upon him last time," Armand murmured, to Eleni's chagrin, for Nicolas stiffened and stopped weeping. She could recognize an approaching onslaught and wanted to get out. It was ugly, the way Nicolas' hate could look, the words Nicolas could sling out. She was never entirely sure if all of what he said was true, and even worse, he did not seem to care.

"You killed her," Nicolas seethed, and this time the heat of his expression, unbridled and broken, threatened to drive her from the room. She shivered.

"So quick to find reason in something other than yourself. She was never meant for you or our kind," Armand chided, just out of the reach of Nicki's hands, or so he thought, when Nicolas suddenly tore out of his bindings and wrapped his fingers around Armand's neck, leaping upon him and bringing him to the floor.

Before Armand could react, Nicolas was crushing his throat and his windpipe, and Armand was too surprised to stop him from pounding the back of his head against the wooden floorboards as he throttled him. He reached out with long fingers to throw Nicolas off, but the violinist snapped his fangs at them, keeping them away like a feral animal. His grip faltered when Armand kicked as hard as he could with both feet against his chest, and he was thrown backwards, momentarily stunned against the opposite wall. All too quickly, and with a speed and strength they had not known him to command, he hurtled into Armand, crashing with him through the armoire with a sickening crunch into the wall.

Eleni heard feral snarls and blows delivered with a violence that shook the floorboards beneath her shoes. Armand was emerging from the deep crater of furniture and plaster and wall, bloodied from a cut in his temple and a bruise that was blossoming from his eye to his cheekbone. He looked a little stunned but his expression grew hard when he saw the audience they still had, only to turn to surprise when he was yanked backwards without warning. His hand reached out for the edge of the armoire but she could not make out anything in the tangle of ruined boards, clothing, and papers. Then Armand's hand shook and the fingers turned white in their grip on the wood and she could hear whispering, feverish and low and hateful.

"No!" came a cry from a voice she recognized as Armand's, and she had no time to think on what the anguish in it might mean before she heard a crunch of bone and a choking sound. She and Felix exchanged worried glances and rapidly they picked the boards apart to try to get to where the two combatants had buried themselves. A squelching noise and a desperate guttural cry made them work faster, and they realized Armand had crashed with Nicolas into the other room, hemmed in by wood and plaster like a small artificial cave.

Shards of wood had impaled Nicolas at critical points, pinning him in place like a moth on a board. He was gazing up at Armand with a helpless, pained expression, his eyes enormous and his limbs akimbo and shuddering to move. Armand had torn open his chest and, shoving his hand through bone and skin, wrapped his fingers around Nicki's still heart. The coven master was weeping openly, his expression a mask of blind fury. He looked up and back when Felix and Eleni entered the room, as if breaking from a reverie. He looked the immaculate teenage coven master in black, hands dripping with thick blood. Nicolas' chest was exposed and open, his rib cage cleaved and popped apart, and his vampire powers were keeping him alive and in pain as it struggled to heal. He clenched his teeth, looking up at Armand with an odd kind of satisfaction even though he must have been in great pain. Perhaps he had emerged on the other side in madness.

"Armand!" Eleni cried without thinking, and Felix moved forward a step. Armand released Nicki's heart and stepped backwards, stumbled, and sat down on a broken plank. He put his blood tear streaked face in his bloody hands. Nicolas' breaths were coming in small choking pants, for he was unable to breathe with his lungs and chest cavity so exposed.

"I'm...I'm sorry," Felix said to him as Nicolas watched him carefully, eyes swiveling without moving his head. "For what I am about to do." He pulled a stick of rubber from his pocket and stuck it between Nicki's teeth for him to bite on. It soon became necessary as Felix clumsily grabbed both sides of Nicki's rib cage and tried to push his chest back together. Nicki's screams were muffled by the gag he instinctively bit down on, but Eleni could hear the psychic resonance of it in her head, and no doubt it echoed through the theatre and the surrounding neighborhood. His nails gouged deep bloody lines in what wood his fingers could reach, and still Felix gritted his teeth and shoved the bones back together, holding them in place until the unholy blood Nicki carried could knit them back together. Nicolas' screams quieted into a whimper, and though he had not the energy to weep, little desperate sounds escaped him. Felix supported him until he could stand, and he staggered until it was apparent he did not have the strength to walk on his own. To their surprise, he reached out to Armand with trembling fingers. The coven master looked up, expression blank with a hint of fatigue. He smiled without guile or anger or threat, and sweetly. Standing, he limped to Nicolas and caressed his face though the violinist shied away from his hand. Felix didn't know whether to help or to protect Nicki against Armand. What could have provoked Armand to do this? What had Nicki whispered?

"It is this," Nicolas said to Armand earnestly.

"I don't understand," Armand said, shaking his head and returning Nicki's gaze in curiosity.

Nicolas looked like he had been slapped in the face.

"You! You..." He grimaced and gave a keening sound of pain, putting a hand to his chest. Armand was on his guard, and he blocked Nicki's first, pathetic punch before Felix held Nicki back. "You said! You said! You told me!"

"Armand, what is the meaning of this?!" Eleni demanded, unable to endure this any further. Nicolas was becoming agitated again, when before the pain had quieted him. He was struggling against Felix to reach Armand, but he was so weak, the Thirst pulling at him to heal him, that he barely managed to tap Felix.

"None of your concern," Armand snapped suddenly, keeping his eyes on Nicki. He turned to her with a glare and left without a word.

"He promised! We had a deal!" Nicolas screamed hoarsely, straining against Felix's hold. He thrashed wildly and Eleni grabbed his head to try to calm him and still him. His face was working furiously, his expressions fluctuating between desperation and agony, his teeth clenched or his mouth open in a howl of horror. She kissed his eyelids, then his forehead, then his cheeks.

"I am so sorry you are in such pain, Nicki," Eleni said. He seemed to barely understand her, and she tried a different tack. "What does M'sieur de Lenfent require?"

"Wh...what?" He asked, stilling at once, confused. It was encouraging.

"I wish to assist Monsieur de Lenfent. What does he require?" she asked patiently.

"A...I'm..." The question threw him off guard, to think of himself in third person. "Justice. Order."

Eleni was taken aback. It was not the answer she had expected.

"How can we assist him? What can we do for him?"

"He needs...He needs to be shown what he deserves and what others deserves." A mad giggle escaped him that quickly dissolved into a sob. "He only ever gets one, doesn't he?"

"You don't deserve any of this, Nicki!" Eleni gasped, horrified at the depths of his self-loathing.

"It's good enough," Nicolas replied bitterly, looking up at her through his eyelashes as he hung in Felix's arms, panting with effort from the conversation alone. "The coven master promised. He promised order. He promised." Nicolas bowed his head, shaking it inconsolably. "I made my own bargains. I'll just have to try again."

"Nicki?" Eleni asked uncertainly, and stepped back when Nicolas raised his head and screamed at her wordlessly, nothing but pain and rage howling from his raw throat.

Felix clipped him from behind, catching him as he fell unconscious. The quiet was merciful and Nicki was never so young and innocent as when he was in repose and still.

"What are we to do with him?" Felix asked after they had removed the ruined shirt and tied him bare chested to his little cot again. The wound was bloody and faint and would need more sustenance to heal.

"Put him in his coffin. Let him rest," Eleni murmured, looking down at him with pity.

The next night Nicolas had vanished from his cot by the time they reached the theatre, with not a trace or scent of him to be found. Armand stood in the doorway to Nicki's dressing room in a cold kind of silence and Eleni found herself edging away despite herself.

"Should we send the others to search for him?" she asked softly.

"No need," Armand said coldly without looking at her, eyes still on the ruined furniture in the room. He was staring at an old playbill that had been crumpled against the leg of the chair. "I know where he's gone. He took his violin, didn't he?"

To Armand's irritation, Eleni insisted on accompanying him to Nicki's flat, where torturous strains of violin music poured from the open window. The hot scent of mortal blood put them on edge, however. Nicolas had guests. He had lured someone here for a small concert and there was no telling what his plans were, if he still had presence of mind for any.

"Ho, it's M'sieur de Romanus and Mademoiselle Louvois!" Nicolas announced when they entered, over the sound of his own violin playing, his arms and fingers moving almost automatically as if a separate part of him. "Bon soir, mademoiselle et monsieur!"

On the divan were the bound and gagged figures of two mortals, one dressed in the black robes of a magistrate, perhaps a judge. The other was a woman in reasonably wealthy finery. They wriggled weakly where they lay, trying to plead with Armand and Eleni.

"Nicki, what is the meaning of this?" Eleni asked, afraid of what he may have already told the mortals, or done to them.

"I wanted to know if our contract was binding," Nicolas said, dropping his violin with a soft thunk in its case. The silence was a deafening contrast to the dizzying whirligig melody of before that crescendoed without end. "You remember, Armand?" Nicolas' hands were shaking and he seemed to be suppressing low shudders of laughter between his words. "I asked the Honorable Judge Balfont to adjudicate the validity of our verbal oral agreement those few short years hence, down in those catacombs of Les Innocents. I'm afraid, my dear Eleni, you were not in attendance, but I was not expecting you tonight. You are in danger of finding these proceedings as tiresome as the respectable judge's wife here."

"Nicolas--" Armand began, his tone in warning.

"Shush, shush, proper service has not been made, I know," Nicolas said with a somber expression, hands held up and trembling with excitement. "And I was lax in my procedure, my protocol, I didn't present any evidence whilst you were present! Allow me to remedy that now." Without warning he yanked the judge's head to one side, revealing the angry red bite marks already on his neck that were previously hidden by his cravat, and began to feed.

The mortal made a choking sound, then a moan, struggling and kicking beneath Nicki's grasp as his wife tried to scream, then sob. Her gag was surprisingly effective, and Eleni had to thank Nicolas silently for that foresight in whatever moment of clarity he had when he executed this insane scheme. Armand rushed forth, shoving Nicolas away from the mortal, causing blood to fountain down the man's neck and his shirt before drying up in a trickle. He collapsed glassy-eyed against the sofa, breathing shallowly next to his wife.

"Repeated counts of the same!" Nicolas muttered, batting Armand's hands away and staggering to his feet, eyes glazed and movements uncoordinated as the blood worked through him. "Does it count as duress? Any agreement--"

"What the hell are you attempting to accomplish?" Armand demanded, grabbing Nicolas by the front of his shirt and shaking him. The violinist let out a low giggle, and clapped his hands over his mouth to tamp down the mirth and madness.

"You've forgotten?! If you've forgotten that's good, that's good, that means you weren't, you weren't re-negotiating," Nicolas finally stammered, fingers nervously playing with themselves as Armand held him up by his shirt. "We--you, you and I, we had a deal down in the crypts, do you remember? The rites, the coffin, the entombing, all that, you said, you gave it to me, you kept me company the entire way through, always in my head, talking and showing me what was happening, what a privilege it was for a mortal to experience this!"

"Armand, what is he talking about?" Eleni asked warily. She had only been aware of shoving Nicolas into a cage after his ordeal of being beaten and fed upon in his flat. No more than that had happened in Les Innocents, to her knowledge.

"Madness," Armand muttered, looking at the ground because he would not meet her eye. She could tell he looked perturbed. "Stories."

"Yes, exactly, you sealed me in the coffin in the earth and you told me those stories, about the ones you buried for years until they were ready, stories about the damned and the Old Ways. And they were all in my head and you were in my head and I couldn't get you out, don't you remember? And then you pulled me out and set me in the circle, with the Blood, and you gave me the Rites, by fire, o God, the fire, and I promised, we made a deal, you and I, we had stories we were going to make together but if you have forgotten, we do not need the judge, it was simply a misunderstanding," Nicolas ranted, looking nervous again. He stumbled on hands and knees towards Armand, clutching desperately with fumbling fingers at Armand's arms, his trousers, any part he could reach. "You can make it right, you can, you said you would craft the meaning of this. You would let me have my story. You pulled me out, really out, into the earth and dirt and soot and it was so dark and rotten, and you said I would serve Satan so well, and I listened, I was good, it made sense, the evil and the good, it finally made sense, why did you lie and say you didn't understand?! We had a deal! You promised!" Armand flung him to the floor as if Nicolas had scalded him with his very words. The violinist sat up, looking at Armand expectantly, that low laugh threatening to bubble from him every few seconds.

"You should never have been made," Armand declared, his expression thunderous. "We keep you out of deluded reverence to Lestat."

"Don't!" Nicolas hissed, slapping his hands over his ears, his eyes wide.

"Still, he affects you so much? Let me tell you, Nicolas, until you find a way out of this wasteland of madness, he will always torture you thus."

"But it's YOU in my head!" Nicolas growled. "He is...you are enormous in the sphere of my thoughts. We had a deal! You would show me the justice of this underbelly, where everything makes sense in the Darkness! You would give me order!"

"And what would you give him?" Eleni asked, before Armand could stop her.

"Everything else. What more would I need?" Nicolas asked, scoffing at the idea. "My soul pledged and my body given up unto...ah, what was it? You remember, you came up with such words for me to repeat after you. They sounded of the Old Ways, the old rites of the witches place, and I knew it was true, for the first time there was a truth and a sense to things."

"You are an insane fledgling, with no idea of his limits or the discretion necessary to keep our existence secret," Armand pronounced heatedly. "You'll find neither quarter nor allies from the rest of the coven if you continue in this vein. All you are doing is alienating yourself as you did as a mortal man."

"Why would I need them if I have you?" Nicolas asked, frowning. "Isn't that what you said? You were so patient to explain...but I see you've forgotten, that is forgivable, we can forget all this, just, I can remind you of your promise, this all went twisted, that's all, we got away from ourselves..." He fiddled his fingers nervously against his chin and looked to the side in thought, not heeding Armand's rising anger nor Eleni's growing concern.

 


	4. Beneath Les Innocents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armand had made Nicolas the mortal his long before Lestat ever committed his transgression in Magnus' Tower. What happened to Nicolas de Lenfent beneath the cemetery of Les Innocents to irretrievably shatter his mind? What happened in those early days, in the quiet spaces between the mad fits that drove Lestat to abandon him to the very people who pillaged every inch of his mortal life? How does Nicolas teach his coven the ways of the modern world, if he is indeed as mad as Armand would like to claim? Nicolas' mind is a mystery to even himself, and his powers grow dangerous as his mind breaks down.
> 
> This chapter contains: Sane!Nicki, Brainwashing, Implied Sexual Assault, Hallucinations, Implied Mind Rape, Torture, Psychological Torture, Past Imprisonment, Fugue State, PTSD, Implied Flashback, Humor, French
> 
> Sane Nicolas de Lenfent makes the most appearances in this chapter, compared to the others. Definitely the lightest chapter in tone.

And it had begun in a way that had all made sense. He had been drinking, though it seemed he was always drinking in those days, freshly returned from a drunken fight at a local tavern, and he was sullen and surly and deeply unhappy. They had taken away the knife and sent him home to sleep it off, and once they stopped him from killing himself, the fight had gone out of him and he had allowed himself to be escorted home. So he sat in the semidarkness of his house, playing discordant notes on the pianoforte as he drank from one of the many wine bottles that could be found in ready quantities. He had winced, he remembered, when the knock at the door came, and he had straightened his coat, his red coat, and tried to look like less of a complete wretch. It must be his friends from the tavern, perhaps come to return something he'd forgotten, or to ask for money for the coach home, or something, anything as an excuse to check on him in his spiraling descent. If he looked passably normal, perhaps they would go away.

"M'sieur Nicolas de Lenfent?" asked the man in the hooded black traveling cloak, and Nicolas had to step back and stop himself from shielding his nose, out of politeness. The stench of the corpse pits seemed to rise from the man, but Nicolas brought the candle closer nevertheless, trying to suppress the urge to vomit as the queasiness rose in him and his hand wavered. Dear God, perhaps he had drunk a lot tonight. 

"Oui, I have the misfortune to be him," he said, and waited expectantly, uncertain as to this lone traveler's intentions. Perhaps news from Auvergne or England?

"Good," said the man, and one cloaked figure became dozens, and the stench of death and decay exploded towards him as they swarmed, grabbing him and pulling him backwards into the flat, slamming the door behind them, and taking those first draughts from both sides of his neck, choking the breath out of him and making his scream gurgle in his throat. He had tensed himself against them and tried to fight them off, but they shrank from his hands and shoved at him and sank their fangs in again with such speed that he lost his balance and his equilibrium. 

And then had begun the game of cat and mouse in earnest, the pathetic chase around the rooms as he was pounced upon, beaten and kicked and bruised with hands as hard as stone. Someone tore his coat off and ripped up his sleeves, exposing his arms so four more could sink their teeth in and paralyze him in pain and pleasure. Any punches he threw bounced off their flesh and scraped his knuckles, their skin was that hard, and they laughed and licked almost slavishly at the drops of blood that scraped away from those wounds.

He had tried to make sense of it all, he really had, and he had tried to fight, had tried to bargain, had tried to flee. Surely something could be done, he thought, even as these supernatural monsters whirled around him, spinning him with kicks to his abdomen, striking his face until his head spun, then sinking their fangs into his flesh and withdrawing quickly, enough to draw blood and wound him but not enough to drain. And when they caught him in earnest, then would come that pleasure before it brought him crashing back into the reality, that he was going to die. 

He tried to scream for someone, anyone, and they laughed and shrieked and dizzied him as they drained him. All he could focus his mind on were the weak thrashes he could muster against them, as they pierced him and struck him and brought him into pleasure, only to withdraw and remind him of his wretched existence. 

And then the visions came, of that angel-faced boy with demon wings and horns presiding over that pyre, of Lestat with blood dripping from his fangs, of Mozart explaining the logic of the world to Nicolas. He had passed on into a lightness, a song of trust and safety and peace, and he thought, 'yes, this is what I never knew I wanted,' and suddenly he felt the tug at his navel and the crash back into the mortal plane, where all he knew was pain, and where he was being dragged into agony and terror. 

Over and over they bit and withdrew, plunging him into bliss and joy, an erotic thrill twanging through him every time as if he were a puppet to be played, before pulling him out just as quickly back into pain and the world and himself. He moaned, dizzy, barely comprehensible, sobbing helplessly, writhing blindly against their grip, but they had taken too much blood. He tried to find solace in the gentler bite here or the too-hard caress of his cheek and chest or the flashes of pleasure but the pain and the spiraling descent of the torture were too rapid, too intense, too pervasive in everything they did. There would be no escape anywhere from their cackling, hellish shrieking. 

And somewhere between the swooning nausea of being taken again and again and the hard landing in the stinking underground soil, a part of him had become aware that his mind was beginning to fracture. And it was relieved.

The shrieks and laughter had gone, and when the stink of the rotting corpses in the catacombs of Les Innocents hit his nostrils, he retched helplessly against the soil on which he'd been dumped. It was dark, and he could see little by the light of the flickering torches. He looked to be in catacombs or crypts of a kind. He seemed to be in a cavernous space. Far-off screams echoed through the corridors, wails and horrific shrieks, begging and pleading and cursing. 

Crude mental tally confirmed all four limbs were still present, and he blinked into the darkness, feeling the soil underneath his nails as he tried to push himself sitting. He felt unbearably thirsty, and so weak, but he had to find a way out. He had to get away from whatever awaited him next. He shuddered, remembering their fangs, and stifled a terrified groan at the memory of the agony and ecstasy it brought him. Vampires, how could anyone have known?

He grunted softly with the effort of pushing himself to his hands and knees, and tried to steady his breathing as his head swam. The screams around him were horrific, and anxiously and fearfully he goaded himself to struggle to his feet. In those incoherent wails he thought he could hear the cry for more blood, and he knew if they came for him again, he would not survive. He was lightheaded as it was, and despairingly, he realized they might have taken too much blood for him to make it out alive on his own, wherever this was. But no one knew he was here. No one would ever know or find him, perhaps. Would Lestat even be able to guess? Not his Lestat. Though perhaps the Lestat of now, the strange golden haired demon he saw in the theatre that night who had looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. The feeling of alien recognition had stung then. 

The world was falling and his knees were buckling again as he crashed back down into the dirt even as he reached out for the nearest wall. It was warm, like living soil, and his clothes were ripped and torn and he wore nothing but the shirt and belt and breeches. His stockings were snagged and ripped, hanging off him because they had been shoved aside for the wounds on his legs. He brought a hand up to his bruised throat and winced to see the bite marks on his arm.

If he could just rest, for a brief moment. The wails died down, and then started up again in greater fervor. The screams seemed to echo in his head and he closed his eyes briefly as if he could shut them out. He had to keep going. Before they returned.

When he opened his eyes, he became aware that he was not alone. Fearfully he shuffled against the wall as the black robed figure approached, but as it passed by the flickering torchlight, he recognized the face. It was the boy from his vision. 

"You're so beautiful," Nicolas whispered abruptly, the words escaping his lips before he could stop himself. The beautiful youth stopped, his head inclined towards Nicolas on the ground, the flickering light glinting off his russet brown hair. He stood within arm's reach of Nicolas, and his brown eyes glowed as they swept over the ruin of his clothes and the many wounds in his body from where the others had fed on him. His smile was like that of a Botticelli angel, and it disappeared in the blink of an eye. He looked utterly without compassion, and his perfect statuesque figure, like the imitation porcelain doll of a boy entering manhood, was clean and untouched, hovering within the ragged ancient cemetery robes caked with dirt.

Get out, get out, they're coming. Nicolas wanted to flee, wanted to warn the boy to go, but a sinking feeling in his heart made him suspect this youth knew exactly what was coming. He would be the one bringing it, after all.

"Do you believe in God?" The voice was melodious, tinged only faintly with an accent, and it made Nicolas long to hear more words spoken.

"Do you?" Nicolas asked in genuine curiosity. With a movement so swift he could not observe it, his collar was yanked forward and he was drawn up to the youth's face, and the sneering mask on it was terrible to behold.

"Yes," Nicolas whispered, his mouth gone dry, too startled and afraid suddenly to lie. He had seen the fangs, this close. He was unceremoniously dropped to the floor, crushing the breath out of him. He could feel his strength returning, slightly, and he pushed himself onto his back. The youth's face had smoothed out again, and Nicolas was almost disappointed not to see demon wings in the flickering shadows behind him.

"You are among the children of the Damned now, and no mortals enter these crypts and survive," the youth informed him. But vampires weren't real. And if they were, then, then all those superstitions, all the faith Nicolas had been tested for, that he had thought himself so weary and cynical against, that based on seemingly overwhelming evidence and logic made no sense in the world he tried to balance. . .he had failed. It hasn't been a lie. He had simply truly failed, hadn't he? And logic meant nothing, if it ever had. "Does the world make sense to you, M'sieur de Lenfent, for vampires and ghouls to walk the earth and snatch you from your home? Or does it make more sense for a trusted lover to disappear and keep you like a caged bird the way he keeps the theatre of vanities, or for a lord's son to run away with a draper's son?"

How did he know these things? The words stung and the truth of them, more so, and yet- - "You're saying things I've trodden over too often of late to have it shock me," Nicolas retorted, scornful and cynical even now. "The world is unjust. Those obsessed with goodness, who think they can craft meaning from life and deeds, merely fabricate delays against the inevitable. There is no meaning. There is nothing. There will never be any sense of it. And everything and anything we make falls away as a travesty in the face of it!" He did not know why he was crying. How did they know about Lestat? The knife-wrenching pain in his heart surged briefly at the thought, that he might see Lestat soon, that this would all be explained. Only it would not be the explanation Nicolas would ever want to know. Even if it were the only truth there was to be had. 

"So young," the youth mused, eyes half-lidded as they gazed down at Nicolas. "So bitter already. If this is your truth, why do you weep? Who do you weep for?"

Nicolas' expression cleared in surprise, and with dirt-stained hands, pawed at his wet cheeks and blurred vision. "It means nothing," he muttered, his voice thick with emotion.

"You suffer because you still long for that dream of justice you lost," the youth explained patiently. "And you weep because you are so afraid now, that you are forever forsaken for the things you have done and the man that you are. Your own philosophy damns you."

"Is this why I was abducted here?" Nicolas demanded despite his fear. "So I could be lectured on existence by a fairy tale monster?" He would have said something crude, like how the boy looked young enough to never have even been bedded, let alone know the despair that Nicolas felt every moment, but some scattered sense of self-preservation told him the creature before him had been an incubus in many a nightmare. 

To his horror, the youth's lips curled into a smile. As Nicolas turned to run, the vampire's hand shot out and snatched his arm, whipping him around and pulling him to his small chest. Though Nicolas was nearly a head taller, the youth's grip on him did not waver, even as he punched and kicked, and stamped and shoved against him.

"No, damn you!" Nicolas whispered as he was brought close, and his mind rebelled at the excitement he felt in anticipation of the bite and the inevitable swoon into pleasure. He should not want this, but in such a world, what was to say what anyone should do?

The youth yanked him close, oblivious to Nicki's struggles, and Nicolas screamed as he felt the piercing sharp bite of fangs in his neck, deeper and sharper than anything he had felt before. And it was painful, there was no pleasure this time, just the bruising slice at his neck and the vice that gripped his heart. He felt the boy's grip slacken as a great force hit Nicki's mind, and suddenly the youth was there inside his head. A part of him was pinioned, vulnerable, cleaved to the vampire and helpless in his arms as his blood drained out of him. The other part was preoccupied. In the Parisian salon drawing rooms of Nicolas' mind, the youth walked, each footstep resonating through Nicolas' being.

/You wanted order. You dreamed of justice and order and all the things anyone else called good and evil and beauty and ugliness were just barely adequate names that could fit inside that balance of order, wasn't it?/ the boy asked, and his voice throbbed through all of Nicki's thoughts and through his head, unavoidable and implacable like a great force of nature never to be denied. His salon rooms could not sustain it, and they were crumbling around the youth, splintering and breaking off into the void. He thought he could hear an ocean, vast and borderless...

/And you, the treasured eldest son, you did everything right. And the world gave you no justice or order, merely the understanding of their absence and the ability to alienate yourself with that great revelation. Is that not so?/ But the boy was not waiting for an answer, and Nicolas could not really provide one. If he had any muscles that were not devoted to tensing against the bite and the venom of pain that ran through him, he would have used them to scream until he was hoarse.

He gave a great gasping breath when he was released, and his neck and shoulders stung as he hung in the boy's arms. Every part of him ached.

"I can give you order, here," the youth told him so gently that Nicolas forgot to be afraid. "Here, evil and good have meaning. We are the children of the damned, the servants of Satan, and God does not listen to your prayers down here, if He ever did. Everything has its place, its rigid order. It is the justice you dream of, and the certainty you crave."

Nicolas' head lolled gently as he tried to shake his head. He couldn't understand. What did they want with him? Why torment him so, beat him, drain him almost to the point of death? If they could simply reason with him, why do all these things designed to break a prisoner's will?

"You would serve Satan so well, with your zeal and your faith, M. de Lenfent," the youth said, caressing Nicolas's cheek gently. "And you would find meaning, I would craft meaning for you. Unless. . ." He set Nicolas on his feet, and guided him in stumbling steps towards the cut outs in the walls. When Nicolas tried to push him away and flee, it was like trying to shove himself against a giant immovable boulder. He was so weakened and tired, he could not exert much pressure, but he could not stop himself from trying. The youth ignored these attempts at escape, holding fast to Nicolas' arm and his waist as he moved them inexorably forward.

They came to a stone sarcophagus in the alcove, and the youth moved aside the lid with one hand, revealing a powerful stench that made Nicolas dry retch and cover his mouth. He could not back away, trapped as he was in the vampire's grip. There was a rotting corpse shoved in with the previous occupant. The bloated figure swarmed with maggots, worms, and larva, like a living blob of dark colors indistinguishable in the shadows of the catacombs. This one had not been dead long. Maggots crawled through the eye sockets and the belly was distended and bloated, filled with gases from the insects and vermin that crawled upon it like a living rug. 

Nicolas wanted to scream, but it came out like the whimper of a distressed animal. He shoved blindly and weakly against the vampire. 

"That is someone unworthy, and found wanting, and grateful for the judgment. You must sympathize, as a student of laws," said Armand, and how had he known about that? 

"If this is judgment, or a test for my sins-" Nicolas began to argue, but was cut off by the choking at his collar. 

"I am about to grant you a privilege," the youth said confidingly. Some undefined sound of agony and fear escaped Nicolas then, and the youth shushed him. "Look, look upon it. This means nothing. Even this as the last evil, the end of everything and the death of a life, it means nothing. So what is there?" Nicolas shook his head, shoving blindly against his captor and doing nothing more than bruising himself in the process. With a gentle sigh Armand shoved the lid off a second sarcophagus, making Nicolas cough violently with the dust it raised. This one contained only a skeleton, long rotted away with nothing but bones and crumbling bits of rags, once fine, one of the few in the cemetery with a marked grave, very old and early. "Do you hear your brothers and sisters screaming? They scream for salvation, redemption, and most of all, for Blood. They will receive none of these." 

"No, please no," Nicolas whispered, staring at the open coffin and then looking back at the sickening multicolored corpse. But with implacable force, the youth shoved him face first into the second sarcophagus.

The bones crunched around him and the dust clung to his bloodied wounds, and he panicked, trying to rise and escape the coffin. Dust filled his mouth and made him choke and cough. His outstretched arm was taken and a painful bite administered, draining more blood from him and forcing him back into the grave. As he struggled to keep awake, his hands mustering the energy to move at all, let alone pull himself out, the lid slammed down above his head, shutting him up with the dead man in pure darkness.

He smelled the suffocating stale dusty air that had preserved the skeleton, the rotting cloth of the Dark Ages faded and grimy, and he pressed his hands against the stone lid of the coffin. Even if it had been of wood, he would not have found the strength to lift it. "Stop," he tried to say, and he thought he heard something soft land on top of the lid. One lump. Then another. Then a scraping noise. 

"I said before. You would serve Satan so well, and you would be the instrument of evil as surely and as eternally as the world exists," the youth was saying outside, only he heard the words as loudly and clearly as if they sounded from his own mind, and perhaps they did. A soft sound struck the coffin, and sent a current of fear through Nicolas. It sounded like. . . Another lump struck the coffin, scattered, faded. The boy was shoveling dirt. He was being entombed! He would be like the corpse the boy had shown him, with nothing more than this meaninglessness to attend him to the last of his moments. They were burying him alive!

Frantic, he pushed against the lid, painfully aware of his anemic weakness, his ache of his wounds, and his rapidly diminishing supply of air. 

"Most mortals never experience what it's like in their coffin until they are already dead," the youth's voice sounded in Nicolas' head, as if he were in the sarcophagus with him. The shoveling continued, and Nicolas panicked, pushing against the lid, clawing at the rough stone in the darkness with his fingers. He ignored the pain erupting from his fingertips as his nails scraped away, drops of blood raining down on him. He was surrounded by death and it would mean nothing. He would be discovered later, rotting, turning different shades. . .

"Jesus Mary, don't let me die," he prayed, but he knew even that was not a real supplication, and wept at the understanding that he would have no hope. 

"The others, they beg for something they shall never have: absolution," the youth said patiently, and Nicolas was beyond patience. He only wanted out of the coffin. 

"Get the fuck out of my head!" he screamed, his voice loud and deafening inside the box. The air, dusty and thick, was growing more difficult to breathe. He panted in shallow breaths, and pushed against the lid with hands and knees, aware he was only pushing himself backwards, grinding himself against the muddle of crushed bone and history beneath him.

"You no longer believe in absolution. You only beg for eternity. That is easy enough," the youth said. "But you must be purified first."

"Purified?!" Nicolas raged, and he slammed his hands and clawed against the lid. "Is that what you call that corpse?" But the air was thinning and the suffocating, stale stench of the skeleton's grimy rags was choking him. The lumps of soil continued, muffling the screams from the other prisoners in the walls around him, but the youth obliged and the screams and howls and wails suddenly filled Nicolas' head, inescapable and undiminished. It heightened and sharpened his panic and fear, and he remembered he was trying to carry on a breathless argument with an immortal entombing him alive. 

"Stop! Stop, don't bury me in here, please don't, please," he begged, the skin on his hands and fingers scraping raw against the stone as he tried to push against the coffin. He bruised his knuckles again trying to punch against the lid. These might be his final moments. The stone coffin was airtight. He would only have a few minutes left of this stale, gritty air. He stilled, trying to think, but the boy's voice unsettled him once more and made him twitch.

"Where is your faith?" The voice of the boy resounded in his head and cleared all other thought or sound. "Do you not wish to serve? Or do you want to be destroyed?"

"No, I will serve! You were right! I don't want to die, don't let me die," he begged again, his fingers bleeding a little in his desperation as he clawed again at the stone lid. Nothing in the world made sense and he felt the world lurch again as the nausea and the weakness passed over him. The air was growing thin and he could no longer hear the screams of the others, his fellow condemned prisoners. He felt like he was fading, slipping away.

And then, the youth was there in his head, sitting so comfortably it was as if he had been there this entire time. He could see the fine threads of his black robes and the glint of torchlight on his auburn hair. He was slight of frame but beautifully made, a youth just emerging into adulthood with the gifts of both and the defects of neither. He looked utterly devoid of compassion or sympathy.

"As I said, most of us never get to experience our coffins until we are dead," he said inside Nicolas' head, and there was no escaping that hypnotic voice. "It is a privilege, for a mortal such as yourself, to be allowed to go through this test, to die through it and pass onto the other side as a purified spirit."

He cocked his head to one side. "And do you hear your future brothers and sisters, entreating you to join them? They have already been given but the smallest drop of the Blood, to transform them and sustain them for these trials. They do not have me to guide them." The boy asked, and the space in Nicolas' head drained away only to fill with a cacophony of riotous, hellish screams, curses at the tormentors, begging and pleading for the blood, for relief, and for death. 

The thought made dying seem bearable, and he began to think that there was really little in the world that mattered to him now. It was better this way, that he should pass from these brief moments. But unwillingly, he pushed against the sides of the coffin as if he could surface for air or push through an invisible barrier. It made him angry, suddenly, that he should have momentarily fallen for this hollow rhetoric, been tricked back into the lip service he violently refused once he found the freedom of Paris. /Get out of my head!/ he thought viciously, gritting his teeth with the effort before his body forced him to gasp for air. And the boy suddenly seemed to block out all else, and Nicolas struggled, then despaired of doing anything but endure the onslaught of being and personality inside his head. 

"You must accept that this is all that waits, that nothing matters but giving yourself up. You are already dead, M. de Lenfent. You just haven't woken to your new life yet," the youth said, his voice hypnotic, cutting through all thought. "The damned, the servants of Satan, they are given the Blood at their very weakest just after they have been buried and thought dead. But they must be taught to understand and wield the Gifts the Blood gives them. So they are entombed in their coffins again and moved into these crypts to join their brothers and sisters, so they might understand the nature of the Blood Thirst and the Dark Gift, and what domain of Hell they belong to now. They begin to realize, as you will, the core of what they are, and only then can they emerge and be blooded and join us in service. And no one else but I can judge when they are ready." As the youth spoke, Nicolas saw the visions of what he described, those damned souls emerging, too bright of eye to be entirely sane, but equipped for eternity because they had forsaken all else. They gestured for Nicolas to join them, blew him kisses.

He felt himself emptying of purpose and reason and thought as the air thinned and he wheezed, his hands going to his throat and scrabbling at the lid despite himself and all his acceptance of his fate. The boy's voice resonating in his head shredded and interrupted even his instincts. He could never hope to understand any of this, and there would never be any understanding for anyone, surely, and it was going to be all right. As stars began to fill his vision, the pain in his lungs gave him momentary respite from the wounds throughout his body. He could not escape. He was dying-- 

There was a brief moment of that safety and lightness again, of nothing but love and trust, with the heavenly music warming him, and he sighed in welcome and in warmth before he awoke choking on dirt and gasping great gulps of air. Was he dead? Had he died? But it was still his Hell and the youth had pulled him out of the grave like a newborn babe. He lay on the ground and he wept at the burning of his lungs and the piercing ache of his skin and his limbs. The particles of soil scraped against his throat and his eyes stung with tears as he coughed, his bleeding fingers digging into the dirt because there was nothing else to hold on to, nothing to steady him. 

"Don't," he managed, choked with fear as he backed away on his elbows. His bloody fingers left deep gouges in the dirt as he was dragged backwards and pulled tightly to the youth. The fangs appeared, and again he was plunged into pain, the worst pain he could have imagined, and he would never escape it or hope to understand it, and all he could do was to serve it. "I promise you, I will repeat this lesson until you understand," the youth said in his head, his beautiful voice seductive and terrifying. The youth released him again and he was dropped unceremoniously onto the hard dirt. 

Sobbing in pain, with trembling limbs he tried to drag himself away. But the youth pounced on him from behind, taking a deep bite into his shoulder blade and making him cry out into the soil, his lips and tongue open against the filthy earth. But this time, this time it was the ultimate pleasure, and the pain of the fangs and the force against his chest and back seemed only to accentuate it, and the youth was in black still but he was walking with Nicolas in his head and he kissed Nicolas' eyebrows and eyes and mouth delicately and almost daintily. He was beautiful and Nicolas wanted to say yes, this was beauty and evil as he had always understood it, and the youth nodded and said in his head, /you will serve so well/ and kissed Nicolas deeply on his mouth. He moaned into the kiss, weakened limbs barely holding onto the youth's shoulders, and the hot sweet Blood entered his mouth, just a few drops, and he understood for the first time the thousands who had perished and wailed beneath this creature's implacable will and insatiable fangs, and that was beautiful and tremendous. 

And then the real torture began, o, whatever this boy's followers had wrought upon Nicolas' body seemed like child's play, a faint echo of the ministrations the youth performed on Nicolas' soul. 

Within the space of a few seconds it seemed like he felt a lifetime of visions, the eerie space of centuries compacted into what must have been brief moments.

His bruised body was kicked again, and he thought it was like an impetuous, spoiled child stamping for a treat. He reached out with bloodied fingers and gritted his teeth when a boot slammed down on his wrist, grinding his bones through the soil and into the suddenly surprisingly hard stone below. He was falling through them.

Was he still in the catacombs? In anger he wanted to rise up, to chasten this demonic boy, for his pain had seemed to dissolve and the strength had flowed back into his limbs. He staggered to his feet, sober for the first time in months, and the wrongness of the surcease of his pain had not yet struck him. He was in total darkness, and could barely see the shadowy outlines of his own hands.

With a pang, he remembered why he drank, why he tried to forget and dull and muddle his memory of losing his faith, of losing Lestat, of losing his love for anything. And then it faded, and he tried to grasp at the feeble tendrils of this disturbing revelation, of why he should find it unendurable to forget the pain and yet equally unbearable to remember it, before it dissolved.

He was just himself, lost in the darkness. 

Then came the blow of the fist that sent him reeling back, the physical pain blossoming across his nose and his face. The boy, that youth, a fresh faced innocent, deceptively and dispassionately beautiful. But this was familiar, he had seen it already, he had felt it, hadn't he, in some lifetime ago?

He didn't know anymore. He was in the Jardin du Luxembourg, and in the Neapolitan garden of his early youth, and they blended together and he was walking in the nighttime air. There was an ache within his chest that troubled him, something lost, but he was here to meet the boy. And there was that dark red head of hair, curling softly, and his heart seized in fear that he would miss him, before it warmed with gladness. They embraced, the cold smooth skin sliding over Nicolas, who seemed feverish in comparison. 

"Where have you been?" That young voice sounded so tender, and Nicolas was sorry to have left him. The flash of pain he felt in his mind reinforced this, to be smoothed over by pleasure at having remembered his devotion. He had lived years like this, decades.

"I had to see to the grounds," he found himself saying. "There are lands to be managed and taxes to be paid. Philippe cannot do it forever and Etienne is too young to know how."

"But why should that pull you away from me?" The boy asked almost petulantly, stretching upon the grass before he pulled Nicolas down into the flower bed. He found himself weakening at the knees, but he thought that he had promised Etienne lessons tonight, and a story. He tried to ignore the spasm of pain. He knew it came from the boy, from his strange powers, but he had grown accustomed and even as he was being trained like a dog with honey and vinegar, he fought it.

"It doesn't. I am here," Nicolas promised him "And you know where to find me. Only, I must tell Etienne his bedtime story."

"Tell me a story," the boy replied, his lips drawing together in a pout before they planted kisses on Nicolas' eyelids and cheeks, and Nicolas drew back from his attentions and realized that he was not a boy, really, but nearly a young man, and all the more dangerous because he did not yet look so, in the right light.

"I will have plenty of stories," Nicolas promised him. He suddenly felt old, weary, stretched. The boy never aged, but it had been forty years and he still wanted stories. When they met, hadn't the boy promised him tales that would explain everything? And when was that? How had they met? Something felt wrong. Nicolas sat up, and frowned when the youth rose and pushed him backwards into the lilies. They were enormous and tall, and they seemed to form a canopy above them, wreathing that auburn hair like an angel. There were no lilies planted in that garden in Naples, and he should have thought of it earlier, should have noticed. The urgency of telling his little brother stories alarmed him, cut through this lethargic dreamworld garden, and he felt the pain returning. Where was it from? It did not feel like the whipcrack of reprimand that sizzled through all his senses when he displeased the boy. It came from a deeper ache elsewhere.

"But this is your story that I wish to craft with you," the youth said, bending down to coax a kiss from Nicolas. His hands were tight on Nicolas' wrists, pressing them into the grass, and his weight kept Nicolas in place. He saw Nicolas looking at them, and a stillness descended. Even the breeze rustling through the trees and grass stopped. "Don't you wish to please me, and tell such stories with me?"

"Of course, of course," Nicolas murmured, feeling the peace wash over him at being captured, at being pinned. Etienne would understand, Nicolas couldn't, wouldn't move. Etienne was grown up now, and Nicolas would suffer if he did not attend to the boy. He had stories to tell and he would not ever get up from this earthen bed. The ground dipped and he felt his body relax as the dirt began to fall around them. They were sinking into the ground, and the hole of lilies above them was turning rectangular, creating a grave for them to share, and this was where he belonged, in the grasp of this youth, where he would know peace and stories.

"But this is my grave," Nicolas remarked, and the youth smiled lovingly and Nicolas did not think he had ever known such safety or tranquility. Nicolas did not think. He let the boy hold him down as the dirt packed in around them, filling his ears and his eyes and his nose. 

He woke up gasping for air, terrified of the dream. It was a farce, a stupid fantasy, that a lifetime of seduction and brainwashing could be so gentle. He had disobeyed, he had rebelled, and now his master would come and give him what he deserved. Alone and naked, hanging on the rack in a lightning-bristled field of terror crops, he waited and bled. He did not have to wait long.

The angel-faced lord came down from his carriage, taking off his brocaded black frock coat with the gold thread and handing it to the footman of the coach. His lips were coral pink, his hair a coppery russet brown. The silk was white at his lily pale throat and his waistcoat was grey, and he rolled up his sleeves and pinned them back carefully. 

Even in Hell, one must observe niceties. The boredom of the grotesque sight of the fields made Nicolas cling to every one of these luxurious details. He had almost forgotten what other colors looked like. What had the master worn last time? Silver? Crimson? Had he sported horns or a tail, or perhaps wings and hooves, as was the fashion five seasons of Hell ago? It was hard to recall how long he had been hanging here, and the only change and diverting activity were the sour sharp visits of his master and torturer.

The churning yellow clouds above and the clap of thunder threatened another rain of sulfur and acid, and he dare not hope for shelter by then. He lay upon the rack, wrists shackled to the rough wood with lead, the skin on them worn raw and angry red, healed around the metal and broken open again into crevasses and hills of ragged flesh, ankles tied with barbed thorns to the legs of the instrument underneath, tiny pricks of blood forming every time he shifted his weight. They could move, but upon the bed of needles, why would he want to?

He licked his parched lips as he heard the heels clicking on the path made of bleeding fingernails.

"Master, m-mercy," he whispered, and stifled a scream through clenched teeth as the fiery poker was pressed into his hip, branding him with the devil's seal.

"You ask for mercy here, when I take such individual care and attention in teaching you what it means to be a proper demon?" The devil with the face of an angel asked quietly, always cold, always dispassionate, as sweat poured down Nicolas' face and he seethed through his teeth.

"So sorry to be a, a disappointment," he panted, squeezing his eyes shut, his breathing hitching in his throat as an icy cold finger traced over the recent burn. As it had all the other marks and scars across his soul-body. They had been through this, for weeks, months, years, was it centuries? Time had no real meaning down here.

"Again, with the useless, feckless apologies, the toothless sarcasm, instead of offers and bargains to make recompense," the devil said, sounding disgusted. "This is precisely what I am talking about. A servant of Satan relishes in the agony, the pain, the suffering and the exquisite tortures we can draw from the soul. We are artists with this, as practitioners and recipients, and you writhe in torment like any common dredge."

"I will never enjoy it," Nicolas snarled, crying out and shutting his eyes as the skin from his thigh was flayed ever so delicately with the jeweled dagger in his master's hand.

"Do not make promises you cannot keep," his employer instructed with raised eyebrows, looking beautiful and innocent as he pulled the skin from Nicolas' leg, then began taking stripes from the skin at his ribs, as if diagramming an instructional surgery. The color of screams he drew from Nicolas tinted the air around them, puce and indigo and green and chartreuse, and he waved these clouds away in annoyance. "Really, these are not the compositions I wish to hear. I want a Sonata of Suffering, not Variations in Groveling Fear. Celebrate and savor what enlightenment I bring."

"No," Nicolas growled, his voice hoarse. He was a demon, and he was bound to the flesh by his employer, but how he longed to escape, to go above to Paris or the mountains of Auvergne, and where had he heard of that place? The pain was fading at the thought, until his finger was twisted and broken and pulled away. He watched it come off and the screams would not stop in his ears.

"There is no salvation for you, no Heaven, no mortal plane," his tormentor promised. "They would not want you, and they have never wanted you. You ask for mercy? The merciful thing to grant you is this lesson, that you love it, that you relish it and bathe in it and luxuriate in it. Will you not love the agony?"

"Fuck you and your agony," Nicolas spat, thinking how would he play the violin again, and he was free to give up now and return to the fold, and where had those thoughts come from?

"Very well," the youth said lightly, and his ice cold hand went around Nicolas' exposed throat, and began to squeeze.

"Ghhk," Nicolas choked out, beginning to thrash against his bonds until half of the rack fell away, the bed of nails digging deeper into his shoulder blades as his legs came free. He felt a hand on his groin, coaxing, and he wanted to shake his head, to sob, but this could hardly be what was required. Nothing was required of Nicolas except that he endure.

"Perhaps we can perform a feat of translation, then," said the youth, as Nicolas began to see stars. His naked body thrashed again before it was pressed tightly against his master's smaller form. Against his will, his cock was coaxed to wakefulness and through all the pain, with the loss of oxygen and equilibrium, made to stand at attention. "We can start with ecstasy first. Agony cannot come without a contrast, and you have been lost in this too long."

As his vision began to dim, Nicolas could feel that cold hand stroking him, and he knew this was wrong, it felt wrong, and he wanted none of it, for how could this be ecstasy? How could this be passion and trust and love? He must have felt these once, to know these words, but here in Hell it was hard to remember what they meant, only that they were not here. They had no place in Nicolas' experience. They were not for him.

With a rush of pleasure his throat was released, and as he choked and coughed for air he felt cold lips seize around his cock, hands holding his hips tightly in place, and he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth and willed himself not to sob, willed himself to soften, willed himself not to enjoy a single particle of this. He could not do it, and a half-moan, half-sob escaped him as that clever tongue encircled his glans and stabbed his slit, the throat deep and soft and pressing around him, bringing him a relief he thought he had forgotten. It was enough, to let his captor know he'd slipped, he'd opened the door, and with futile gestures he tried to kick away.

"You sound like you're begging for it," the youth remarked dryly, wiping his mouth free of Nicolas' blood. He had not neglected the wounds. 

"No, no, I'm not, I'm not, I don't want this," Nicolas begged, knees weak, still painfully erect, but his master held all the excuses and justifications he didn't even need to do what he would do next. 

"Your body disagrees," the youth said. "Demons shouldn't lie. Humans do enough of that. Your enjoyment is noted. There is no need to be embarrassed. You want this. You only have to say."

"No, I don't, I really," Nicolas began, and stopped talking, realizing there was nothing he could say to stop this, as the hand resumed his ministrations. He closed his eyes, biting down on his lip hard enough to draw blood, as the youth stroked him just a little too roughly, enough to bring an unwilling grating pleasure that, to his shame, made him thrust upwards involuntarily.

"That's it," his master said approvingly, and the tears burst from Nicolas's eyes, running down his cheeks in such rivulets that his master licked at them as if to relish the pain therein, before capturing his mouth and scraping teeth across his wounded lip to draw out even more blood. And all the while, that hand, never quite enough, demanding that Nicolas play a part as well, to beg for his touch, to thrust with his hips, for the only relief that could be had. 

"But you mustn't close your eyes," his master said, though Nicolas turned his face away and could not face the world for his shame. "Pay attention!" And suddenly, his eyes were on fire and everything below his waist was on fire and he couldn't see, he could only feel as a dagger went carefully around his eye to cut off one eyelid, then another, his tears scalding and burning him like acid as he bled tears of blood down his cheeks, and dimly he was aware that he had been entered, that his master was thrusting into him with a scraping raw intensity that had none of the smooth glide of any lubricant more slippery than the blood that flowed down his legs, and suddenly his screams weren't enough, they crested and shattered, and the laughter erupted from him instead.

He couldn't close his lidless eyes, and through tears of burning blood he watched the clouds of sulfur roil, and his master's gently smiling face as it struck the deep spot within Nicolas that spiked pleasure into all of this, and he began to laugh a desperate kind of laugh he had never heard before.

This was all for him! No narcissism singled him out for treatment, he was merely one of the damned Children of Satan, and he was to be chided and reprimanded and corrected and brought back into his master's embrace.

And how the devil loved him, how he thrust roughly and deep, varying his pace, never letting Nicolas settle into a comforting rhythm where he could withdraw and let his mind wander. And just to test him, he paused, forcing a whine out of Nicolas, his bottom shamefully thrusting downwards, the nails digging deep and scraping long gouges into his back as he tried to recapture his master's cock in his ass. The break in the momentum and almost soothingly numbing rhythm had been agonizing, the need to resume it reflexive.

"Yes, that's it," his master crooned, resuming his pace and sending a flood of relief and pleasure through him. "Show me how much you want it. Show me how you love it. Show me!"

And he screamed and laughed, he no longer knew which, as he danced for his master upon his cock, and the hand returned in reward and assisted him as he raped himself, tugging him onwards, and he was coming so close to the crest he thought he must be crying, genuinely sobbing now, but his mouth was twisted in the rictus of a laugh and he cared not what came from him any longer, only that he see this through to its completion.

And the devil, the handsome youth, struck the secret spot within him again and again, and the thumbscrews turned and the rack stretched him and his body sang with pain as the nails grew iron hot and scraped his back into a network of gouges and his master brought him off with one hand as he carved the flesh of his arms with the other, flaying and pinning the skin aside to expose the muscle and tug it from the humerus and his secret spot of pleasure rang through all his senses and through all this and the pain and agony blended into all this ecstasy as his eyes bled tears of fire and blood and he writhed and danced as the devil asked and it was so easy, he realized, it had been easy all along, and he scream-laugh-sobbed as he came, no longer able to distinguish whether he wanted it, whether it was pleasurable, or whether he wanted it to end, because if it ended, then the cycle would begin again, and he had not enough skin or flesh for that.

"After a millennium of fruitless torment, all it took was five hundred years of teaching you how to rape yourself," murmured his master, planting a kiss on Nicolas' forehead. Had it really lasted so long? Or had he broken Nicolas over and over for five hundred years? He couldn't remember anymore.

He hung limply from his wrists, staring blankly, for there was little else he could do, and his head drooped and he watched as the blood dripped down from his face to join the blood flowing freely down his thighs and puddling against his feet to the ground. With trembling lips he kissed the hand held before him. Yesterday five hundred years ago it had been this, hadn't it? He had dreamed he watched his little brother flayed and his friends eaten alive by hell hounds. He had none of these, mere illusions, for what relatives would a demon have? He had only the master, and the master gave agony and ecstasy in equal measure, and Nicolas need not decide which was which in that case.

With a shudder he felt himself awaken from the nightmare, and he curled in his own bed in the house on Rue le Regrattier by the quai, and he prayed the Lord's Prayer to himself as he had not done in years. They had never come for him, but the echo of that terrible inevitability, a hopelessness unlike any he had thought he knew hence, stayed with him. With shaky legs he rose from his bed, splashed water on his face, and looked at himself in the mirror. Eyelids both there. Hair gone a pure snowy white from shock, when he had met his lover ten years ago and been pulled from a burning fire that had claimed many other lives in the cesspit of the Les Innocents day markets, before it had been demolished. The nightmare was fading already.

He padded softly into the parlor, where his lover dozed over a book of religion, not yet abed. He kissed the top of the reddish auburn head and was greeted by the angelic face of a beautiful young man, younger looking than he was, as if just emerging from boyhood, yet wiser than Nicolas by far.

"I need only you," Nicolas promised him, kneeling before him, and letting himself be drawn into the boy's embrace. The pain blossomed through his body and he swooned in ecstasy, the intensity all that he sought. For years they had lived like this, and the shade of regular life had dulled and faded until pain and pleasure and joy were all just variations on faint dun-colored echoes of what his lover was able to bring him. "I love you." And his world tipped and he was lost in the tide of pleasure that washed over and drowned him.

The few precious drops of vampire Blood only served to heighten his enslavement. It was not up to him to decide whether he enjoyed or feared anything. 

When his head lolled back from the weakness, the anemia, and the dizziness, the hard slap at his cheek to awaken him drew out a pleasured moan instead of a pained yelp, and he dry-sobbed helplessly in his confusion. He didn't know what was wanted! He didn't know himself.

The universe had fallen away and his world was nothing more than the constant and rapid vacillation between pleasure and pain that this beautiful youth was able to command. He thought he may have never known anything different. He thought he might be dead, and that this was Hell, and gradually every part of himself would be betrayed and lost to him. Eventually he thought about reaction, and only reaction, for where was there for him to escape to?

When he was finally released, he curled at the youth's feet, his fingers weakly clutching the hem of his ragged black robes to keep from vomiting. He no longer knew what he wanted, but his tormentor was the only constant he understood. The visions, those lifetimes, they brought lessons that changed his core and yet he could recall neither the shape of them nor the hallucinations that taught them to him. The feelings they left disoriented and overwhelmed him, and his mind flinched and reeled whenever he tried to think on it. 

"You may call me Armand," said a cultured voice that caressed him. "Can you hear me? Nod if you understand."

Nicolas pushed his chin down as he could, and struggled to raise his head again. He coughed, falling back onto his side again, and with stupid, lurching efforts, tried to push himself sitting. His wrists kept losing their anchor and buckling, making him crash pathetically into the rotten dirt. Armand watched him in silence.

"Do you know where you are?"

"H-hell?" Nicolas croaked into the soil, and tried again.

"Yes, this is Hell, is it not?" Armand mused. "And I am its keeper." He watched Nicolas' struggles for a while in silence, and then asked, "Why do you keep pushing yourself up? Why do you keep trying?"

Nicolas stared blankly before him, his limbs trembling as he tried to stay as upright as his weakened limbs would allow. "What else is there?"

Armand snatched the back of Nicolas' neck, smiling at the shudder that ran through him, and held him upright.

"Do you think this will save you?" he asked. "Will you ask a boon of me, tete-a-tete?"

"I don't know anymore," Nicolas said, breaking down sobbing. "I don't, what do you want with me? I don't understand. Why are you doing this?" And yet they both knew these were the same questions Nicolas had asked his entire life.

"Do you think this will save you?" Armand repeated, appraising him. "I craft the only order and reason here, and the best way for you to understand is through me. I can craft meaning for you from the emptiness of your life and the wreckage of your faith. If you make your promises, the mysteries and secrets of the world will be revealed to you."

"If I don't?"

"You can suffer, without end, without meaning, without feeling the significance of your pain. There will be no justice or purpose or meaning. All you shall know is pain without end, without dimension, and your soul will rot and dull," Armand promised him. The vision of the rotting corpse loomed in Nicolas' mind.

"How?" Nicolas asked again, bewildered and afraid. The gaping maw of oblivion, where he would not even comprehend his misery, only that he was in pain, struck a nameless terror in him. It confirmed his fears and fantasies, but never had he really dreamed he would commit or go so far.

"If you would be afraid, fear and hate the light and all the goodness it brings," Armand breathed, sending a ripple of pleasure running through Nicolas with a mere twitch of his mind. "For it is our antithesis, and yet we observe it with envious love, for it heightens the dark despair of our evil deeds and makes salvation so much more distant and impossible." Nicolas nodded slowly, weakly, only half listening. Yes, this was as he'd suspected, and given the evidence before him, given what he'd just been through, how could it not be the truth? "Then we'll begin."

"Do you promise to serve Satan and shun the light of our Lord and his glory?" 

"I do?"

"Do you promise to keep the Dark Ways?"

"What are-"

"Do you promise to never reveal to the world our ways or our true nature?"

"I do."

"If you become a vampire, do you promise to hunt and feed in secret and never arouse suspicion as to what you are?"

"I do." This was said dully, the macabre existence of such a creature simple and easy to explain.

"If you become a vampire, do you also promise to never make another of our kind without my determination?"

"I do."

"Do you promise to keep the existence of vampires and of the coven secret?"

"I do."

"And do you swear your soul and your fealty to me?"

"I do."

"Do you swear to welcome and accept and savor all lessons I can provide you?"

"I-I do."

"Do you swear your being and all parts of your body, dignity, and mind to my will?"

"I, I can't, How does anyone--"

Nicolas was dropped unceremoniously into the dirt once more, and he blinked as he lay on his back, dazed and uncertain. Armand bent down and hovered over him, coaxing soft kisses from his lips. His cold body ghosted over the hot mortal skin, drawing heat and shivers as he caressed and pressed the bruises softly, before drawing a long low, almost frantic moan as he moved his hand over Nicolas' groin.

"Wh-what are you doing?" Nicolas asked desperately. "I promise, I promise, I didn't mean--I don't understand!" Terrified of the pleasure Armand was giving him, he bucked and tried to back away, hot tears steaming down his face as his body rose to meet Armand's caresses. They shouldn't have felt familiar or welcoming, and yet it was as if he had had a lifetime of learning nothing but Armand's touch. The confusion of the embrace stabbed him through with horror and panic. There would be no pleasure without the pain, and the pleasure was too much here for the pain to be anything less than catastrophic.

Armand lay flush against Nicolas' body, two figures in a catacomb of decaying corpses, and the words began to rise from Nicolas' lips, a string of "No, no, no," as Armand disrobed him and stroked him unwillingly towards pleasure in this pit of despair and raw agony. With sharp presses at his bruises with every stroke, and the occasional piercing of sharp fangs wherever Armand saw an unwounded patch of skin, Nicolas sobbed helplessly, shaking beneath Armand's ministrations that seared his nerve endings and intermingled his understanding of pleasure and pain.

He could almost feel his mind shattering, as he climaxed, his vision filled with the rotting corpses and skeletons that grimaced at him, the stench of the corpse pits and crypts soaking through his skin and his hair, and the rotten soil beneath his naked, grimy skin as he writhed like an insect pinned beneath a great needle. Yes, he would have to love this. If he didn't, there'd be only more of that pitiful self-denial, that attempt to think he could ever escape justice and join the light and be good, and there was the real madness. This was merely the true flesh of the world, the skin of lies flayed for him and neatly pinned back to his eyelids. 

When it was done, he lay gasping in a low circular depression, naked and alone. A deep gouge ringed the soil around him, and as he struggled to his elbows, he saw Armand touch a burning torch near it and step back as the circle burst into a ring of flames. He gasped, drawing back and away from the heat and the licks of fire, for it was a tight enough fit that he could get burned. 

"Give me yourself, and you shall want for nothing," Armand intoned, a demon's smile on an angel's as he watched Nicolas from beyond the flames. 

"Yes..."

"I shall craft meaning from your faithless life."

"Yes..."

"You can have a dark story, instead of a series of mistakes and failures."

"Yes, yes. . .please. . ."

"So, do you pledge yourself to me, wholly?"

"I. . .I do."

"Do you pledge your body to me, and give your soul up to my will and my craft?"

"I do."

Armand seemed to reach through the flames and pluck Nicolas out, shoving him into his torn clothing, sooty and flimsy-seeming against the eternity of the decay around him. The flames extinguished themselves and they were in the semi-darkness once more, and when Armand drew him close, Nicolas could feel his mind opening up, and Armand walked inside and showed him what it would be, the Rites, the old sabbats, how it all was and had been done, to hold in that eternal battle. And Armand settled himself in Nicolas' mind, it seemed, and even after the coven master withdrew and Nicolas' thoughts drained away into darkness, any reminder or glimpse of Armand flashed enormous in his head, obliterating all else. 

When he woke once more, the wide rough wooden bars of a cage dug into his aching back. His wounded arms and legs protested as he shifted, the rocking motion of the rickety cage making him sick. He retched, but they had not fed him or given him drink, and he tasted little but bile. They had draped a cloth over his cage, as if he were a pet bird. Beneath him he could see the wood of the funeral pyre. He was totally alone, and he gave a sigh of relief as his limbs relaxed against the bars. The pain had no meaning for him anymore. There was only...the Blood, that dark and ancient magic he had glimpsed and felt, into which he'd cast his mind and where his thoughts still dwelled without him. He glanced down in alarm at the pyre, then glanced away without giving it further thought.

He was beyond exhaustion. Dully, he was aware that he was barely on the edge of life, the dizziness in him making his anemia apparent. The drunkenness had been replaced by a new anaesthetic, and he was too sluggish with sensation, rough wood, sharp jolts of pain shooting up his arms as he tried to push himself sitting, but little else really penetrated the fog of his mind. He couldn't stop thinking about the fire and the rites, the voice in the darkness. Even now the vision of the boy was fading, and all he felt was a piece of himself lost somewhere. He had given it away freely and he had neither the faculties to recall what it was nor comprehend and recover what he had lost.

There was wood. He knew wooden rooms. There was darkness and he whimpered faintly to himself, and took comfort in the pain that radiated throughout his body and reminded him he was here. He pressed against the wounds on his bruised throat and his limbs, and felt for phantom wounds that weren't there. But he had only to slip into the edge between wakefulness and dreaming, yes, there it was, that secret space of thoughts. He only had to wait, that was all that was required of him.

There was wood. He cut his hands on splinters and tugged at his ruined clothing. He had no strength in his hands to shake the bars. Time had little meaning, down here. And he waited and dozed and drifted.

There was wood. And there was light and shifting. 

"There's our little pet."

"The others can smell you, do you know? If they had the strength they would burst from their coffins and tear you to pieces."

A horrific image, his disheveled battered body screaming as they tore his arms from his sockets and latched their mouths onto his shoulders and lathed their tongues around the stumps. And he'd be this limbless creature, a pet in a cage, to be kept for blood and fattened for feeding. He moaned. 

The mocking laughter drowned out his thoughts and he felt his eyes roll in his head as he tried to move. 

"Do you want to escape?"

"We shall find you wherever you go."

"Run, little one, if you can. Go on."

His hand slipped, falling through the bars, and his breathing quickened. Uselessly he flopped against the bars and the door, but he could barely coordinate his once nimble fingers. They kept slipping on the wood. 

"I suppose we've grown fond of you too." Laughter. Mocking laughter, and the breath came out of Nicolas in small struggling pants as he mirrored their scorn. 

"We'll always know where you are." Sing-song. 

"You can't hide from us."

"Not to worry. We'll take care of you."

And suddenly the cage rocked violently to one side and he groaned weakly as his arm was yanked through the cage bars and feasted upon. The swoon overcame him, the visions of another life and another set of deaths, and he moaned as another took his other wrist, and another. He was pulled harshly against the wood with no regard for his comfort or the pressure. All they wanted were his limbs, or whatever part of him was easiest. When it was over he thought he might have come in his breeches, but it was only the false memory of something already slipping away. He knelt, slumped against the bars as he licked at the salty blood draining from his skin, a low chuckle coming from him, and gasped in fear as his cage was shaken and a shriek sounded. The kettledrums! They were starting again, and the screams came around, and he was falling, and he was afraid, that nameless terror of the unknown. 

The world dimmed for a moment and he wanted to be back in the garden, only what was a garden? There was only the pyre and the pyre and that was all he had known, this cage and this pyre, all just him and his world. The dead have no need for gardens. And then he heard that burning bright light of a voice shoot through and pierce all his thoughts. He couldn't identify its owner.

What had been the dream? He twitched, trying to find the strength to listen, his face pressed against the bars for the conversation, but his body would not obey him. He was falling in and out of consciousness, woken only by the screams of fear and agitation, and he struggled to make sense of the words.

At some point the cloth was yanked off the cage, but the nausea had come over him again, somewhere in the darkness there was laughter and he twitched against the scorn in it, the mockery that flashed the memories of the draining from before bright and caustic against his mind. He felt himself slipping back into the calm of the void, the drifting dimness of the pain spreading in his body.

Suddenly he was yanked from the cage and there he was, Lestat, who was he, was this a dream, how did he know this creature whom he seemed to love? But he felt like them, felt every bit the demon, and this was a nightmare crafted to taunt him, and he shoved at Lestat, for this defiance was all he had left as he cursed him. The sounds of the words were loud in his head and he didn't understand what they meant, only that pain was coming, and they had chosen his mortal lover's form. But then the rosary with the little cross had come down and he stared, and a terrible laugh erupted from him. What novel tricks and new shades of torment and bewilderment they could devise! It was not enough for them to strip all control, they could conjure such ideas. How lovely, how wonderfully clever of them. 

But he was being shoved into the arms of another, and, and, he reached up a finger to touch her face in wonder, only to have it snatched aside. This was real! This was not, but the Marquise, they had thought her dead. And the words were sinking in to him and he was waking and suddenly he realized it was real, that was Lestat and this was the Marquise and they had come for Nicolas, to what, to deliver him from one demon's hell into their own? What had they become that he would be a stranger to now? And would they give him the Blood? He had the facility to create all the pain he could ever desire or love, now.

Then he realized Lestat had known these lessons. They were speaking of things as if they were age old truths and Nicolas felt betrayed once more, to have these withheld from him. But the Marquise was afraid, she was terrified, and he followed her gaze dully to the torches and then to the pyre and he realized with a shudder that he had narrowly avoided being set ablaze.

The conversation was suddenly important, but only part of his mind knew it, and that part no longer counted after what Nicolas had endured. He moaned softly, the words and the language sounding so much like the truth that he loathed to slip back into the darkness, but the draining had taken its toll and was coming to collect. He struggled to cling to the words, these words that confirmed all he had just learned from Armand, and it was with a bitter triumph that he relished the choice that had been made for him. Lestat the fool, refusing the inevitable, clinging to this love of mortals when it had never brought Nicolas anything but betrayal! Let him see! Let him learn what the common people think of their lord and monster!

But the draining, and the pyre, that pyre was still there, and they had promises to keep. 

And Armand would come for him but at least he could delay the fire for a little, with Lestat and la Marquise here. 

But the words had come out wrong, he had finally said what he wanted to say and they still came out wrong, and what he saw now with his new vision overwhelmed him, and he did not understand how he was still here, he was but a ghost in this world, directing an automaton. These figures around him were but figments and dreams of a mortal life, now ended, or had it ever really been his? He could not stop thinking of the promises made in Les Innocents, or the mortal young man who played his solos and his own compositions towards what he knew to be an inevitable doom. Where was Nicolas and who was he to be without Armand?

But the violin woke him from his stuporous trance, as it always had and would. There was wood. The smoothly polished wood of different bars against his hands and suddenly the instrument glided through him, melted with him and absorbed him. Captured by the music, he felt a chance to define himself again, without Armand, without Lestat, without his father. And the others had come, and he was in too much of a frenzy to be fearful, too filled with excitement and hate and anger and hurt. 

And he had wanted to hurt Lestat, had wanted to show him what Nicolas had endured, what he felt for him, all the tender mercies of attention and loving care that Armand had taught him, but he could do it with but words and not actions, and he felt the despair returning as he ran away with himself and his mind drew back and away and let him have his way with Lestat and the theatre. 

When they had departed Nicolas sat in the old broken dressing room, pretending to himself to be a lively energetic madman while the others explored the theatre. He had a coven now. He had a definition Lestat could not prevail over or understand. Not yet. Or was it Armand he was concerned with?

It was Eleni, thankfully, and not anyone else, who caught him alone with his head in his hands at his desk, shuddering and shaking. He couldn't stop trembling and he twitched away with her at the door. She was so pretty, and he remembered the horrific snarl that could emerge from that pretty face when it slashed through his skin. Without thinking he had put a hand at his neck and to his shame she saw it and took a step back. 

"I hope you will be able to put behind us what we did to you," she said softly, and he realized there was no subterfuge he could ever build that could fool her. "It was done to a mortal, on a coven master's orders."

"You'll have to teach me, these different standards of perception. Who is the master of our little coven now? Lestat? Me? You?" He sounded bitter and sullen, and he bowed his head. "I did not mean to mock you. My mind flinches and I am merely doling out the automatic reflexes of someone left alone for too long."

"The oldest, wisest, and most accomplished of us are usually chosen or prevail as coven masters," Eleni said slowly, and Nicolas realized she was still standing outside the threshold. With too quick motions that startled her, he rose and beckoned her in. 

"No, we must talk, you are the only one who is not a lunatic or a fool," Nicolas muttered as he gently ushered her into the room and shut the door, then rested his back against it. He did not want to be disturbed. He did not want an audience. He did not trust what he himself would do if there were one. "Although, if we speak comparatively, that's a fairly low standard, n'cest-ce pas?" He chuckled to himself and was surprised to find it not bitter. He felt a little more normal, talking to her, and he could imagine some things had not happened, and pieces of himself sliding back into place. 

"Will he return?" he asked neutrally, unsure of which answer he wanted.

"I do not know. He does not have a reason to stay, but if he discovers where we are, that we are here," Eleni began fearfully.

"We'll make blood run through the streets if we have to!" Nicolas said abruptly, a little too loudly. "We can call the talents of Renaud's back, teach them. Bring them into the Blood, and we shall spread through all of Paris!" Vaguely he was aware he was sputtering, but his words wouldn't stop, and the realization made him hysterical and fearful, panicked. "How many vampires can each of us make? How quickly? We can put on shows to draw the crowds, feed on them in the theatre and turn those we don't devour into more members of our growing cause. We can slink into the royal houses and bring all of France under our Dark rule!" Anything to bring the familiarity of his pain here to this little house. 

Eleni slapped him. He staggered, put a hand up to his cheek, chastened, and clapped a hand over his mouth to stop his laughter. It bubbled through his fingers, and his brow knotted as he frantically tried to control it.

"Each of us makes vows to keep our numbers down, enough for a city to sustain," Eleni said imperiously, her figure regal and her hair dark and pretty even above her stage makeup. "We promised ourselves. We swore to keep the Dark Ways, to never reveal our existence or our true nature. We pledged to never hunt in the open or arouse suspicion as to our nature. We swore to never grant the Dark Gift to another without the determination of the coven master or the eldest. If you do not heed these ancient ways created before the Christian god was even revealed to man, you will not find many to join or stay in the theatre. And you will not be suffered to survive for long."

She waited as Nicolas gasped for breath, his laughter subsiding, and he sat back in his chair and looked at her, normal-seeming and calm once more.

"Well then, mademoiselle," he said, the perfect facsimile of a composed Parisian gentleman. "We'll strive our utmost to keep me alive, shall we? As much of a challenge that change of orders might be."

"M. de Lenfent--"

"Please. You have inflicted upon me touches and intimacies I don't think I experienced from even my dear late mother. Call me Nicolas."

"I am Eleni. And we did what we did out of duty. You should know we bear you no ill-will. Laurent is very fond of you. As am I."

"Yes, Laurent who was so insistent on burning us all alive," Nicolas mused. "Felix and Eugenie, they are fools to follow us, but we are in need of fools."

"Felix was once a warrior monk," Eleni said in his defense. "He is protective and dutiful. He thinks you like those prophets, attuned to forces beyond our reach."

"Then he is a strong learned fool," Nicolas said. "And the moment your old coven master shows up, he'll be barking as the same lap dog again."

"You've shown us a different freedom to survive, Nicolas. Do not be so faithless with us yet. We were not all always under Les Innocents," Eleni said reproachfully.

"And will you tell me your story one day, Eleni?" He asked with a smile. It would have looked normal, had it not wavered the way his hands trembled as he placed them down upon the desk. They both stared at his fingers, and he ran them through his hair to hide the shaking until it stopped.

"Lestat is going to leave," he muttered bitterly as he carded his fingers through his hair. It was the gleaming silk of a vampire's, and the Blood had made it as curly as ever, ringlets of dark chocolate and glints of gold. "I can tell. He doesn't understand this and I can't, I don't know how to make him understand, I don't know anything but the music. What words could possibly suffice? He is going to leave and there is still nothing I can do!"

"Craft the theatre with us into the most magnificent coffer of dark treasures such as the world has never seen," Eleni said, at once comforting and defiant, and her tone made him look up from his brooding. "We can create such delicious beauty, with the music and the plays you write, with the dances and pantomimes the rest of us can execute. There will be nowhere in our Dark World he can turn that does not whisper of our wonders."

"Then he'll have to come back," Nicolas murmured, eyes half-lidded in dreamy thought. "He won't be able to hide or deny it anymore. He'll understand then. He'll see the mistake he's made."

Eleni was too polite to pass judgment. 

"We shall be your assistants, your colleagues," she said, nearing him and slowly raising a hand to touch his and tug it gently from his hair. It was looking to turn into a nervous habit, and she would rather the fledgling have as few tells as could be used against him. "Your pupils in this new era. Your companions, if you would permit us."

"We will make something grand and macabre of this grave," Nicolas whispered, closing his eyes and shuddering at her touch, feeling the sliced of their fangs once more. 

"Shh," she whispered soothingly, a hand smoothing over his hair, untangling it slightly, caressing his face with her cool silken hands. She had never had children, but she felt an unmistakeable sense of protectiveness come over her. She had done this to Nicolas, shattered his sensitive and fragile mind. They all had. They would bear the consequences and the responsibility now of caring for him. It was as much that as an obligation to Lestat that motivated them. "You are one of us now. We are a coven and a coven protects its own, and guards all members against outsiders."

"And against the coven master, who throws them into the flames?" Nicolas asked mildly, not opening his eyes. It seemed a lifetime since he had felt a gentle touch, and her hands on his face and through his hair calmed him. 

"That was his right as the coven master, and even if we could together overcome him, only when pressed for desperate survival do I think we could agree to do it. The ancient laws are powerful and merciless, and to be shunned in our dark world is a terrible thing," Eleni said heavily. "For it was his right."

"Still is," Nicolas said. "He hunts you still, does he not? He simply lacks the imagination." He opened his eyes and his gaze was startlingly clear and sober, and she wondered whether his manic frenzy was just the first flush of fledglinghood, and whether he would settle down into some semblance of sanity. She had seen the signs but she did not want to believe them. Not when they pointed to inevitable ruin. 

And Nicolas possessed a stubborn sensibility that surprised her at times. 

"I do not know what he would do if he knew we were here," she said, letting her fear show. "If he would enter, if he would burn the entire theatre down."

"There is a small tunnel into the catacombs and the sewers. Renaud kept saying he would close it off but the stagehands used to take whores back there and they never started the work," Nicolas said thoughtfully. "Being of stone, it would keep us safer."

She kissed him excitedly on the forehead, much to his surprise. "Oh thank you, Nicolas! Yes, that would be a relief to have. A place of stone."

"Paris is cut through with stone and dirt tunnels," Nicolas remarked, not wanting to suppose her ignorant of any modern fact. "We can dig our own crypts, make them more suitable for our comfort and our tastes. No more ragged corpses to share your bed with." She gave him credit for not shuddering, but he said this so blithely and blandly, with a soft laugh no less, that she feared perhaps parts of Les Innocents had scarred over in his mind and dulled itself against terror and pain. 

He looked up at her and she realized he wasn't really seeing her but what he described in his vision. 

"We'll have limestone delivered from different quarries, small amounts under different names and addresses. It will be no trouble to lift them with our power and lay them with mortar with the utmost speed into floors and walls of such smoothness and balance as to rival la Notre Dame!" He declared. His voice was growing louder, she realized, even as she became entranced and caught up in his dream. "We will build our own dark cathedral, inverted and reversed and underground. Yes, that's it! It will be in every way a better reflection, candlelit stairwells, stone coffins with feather pallets and satin pillows, lace for the altar from which we conduct our meetings. We can recruit mortal engineers to build underground fountains and have their blood be the first to run through them. We could have the beginnings of a citadel, a new era for the damned, starting right beneath this place. And we can spread through the city, buying and evicting the rights to the land below every house, infiltrating the basement of every inn and every government building, until we have a vampire city that is a more perfected reflection of the stinking cesspool above, fed by the blood that flows from above into our fountains! Our underground cobblestone streets will mean travel in secret, and a place to feed anywhere in the city without arousing the suspicion you so fear. And one day when the mortal world is but a shadow of ours, when we are ready for the power, we can influence the thinkers, the politicians, I know just the ones, the right type for it, and there will come a succession of laws that secretly and effectively bring them under our control. Their ruling bodies subordinate to our influence, their gendarmes and military ignorant and subservient to our wishes and appetites, and the entire populace no more than a single pulsing repository of blood for us to take! We shall have vintages, 1792 blonde, 1756 brunette, 1800 Marseillaise, one day, one day, 1766 marquis from the provinces! We can have the Crown, too, from a throne of blood, oh it would be so easy, I can see every step, I can--"

"Nicolas!" Eleni screamed, and he startled, his excited face going blank, and he looked down and realized she was shaking him by the shoulders, and he had one knee bent with his foot on the desk, his right hand raised in declaration. He looked like a revolutionary orator.

". . .oui?" he asked uncertainly, looking confused. How had he ended up here? What was he talking about? They were going to build a home of stone, yes.

"You were shouting," she said reproachfully. "At the top of your voice."

"Oh. I. . .uh," Nicolas looked nonplussed. 

"You were excited," she said reassuringly as she helped him down from the desk. "But there is no need to shout so. We have excellent hearing."

"I, I can't stop myself, it seems," Nicolas murmured. "I don't really want to."

"Shh, it's all right," she said soothingly, rubbing circles in his back and guiding him out the door. The interruption seemed to have unseated him, and he was lost. "Let us go find the others and tell them. Slowly. D'accord?"

"D'accord." Nicolas nodded slowly, letting her lead him through the passages of the theatre he knew so well. He felt like a ghost again, and he pushed over a broomstick just to be sure. Perhaps he was merely a poltergeist. He giggled, making Eleni turn around swiftly in alarm, and his covered his mouth and solemnly waved his hand forward so that they might continue. 

They found Laurent in the accounts room, looking over the papers and documents. 

"What does all this mean?" he asked despairingly, waving stacks of paper in the air. 

"Nothing, nothing," Nicolas muttered, brushing him away distractedly as he rushed around the desk to look at the papers that had been strewn about. The room was tiny and had only a large wooden desk Renaud had purchased for the safe it contained. There were stacks of paper everywhere, accounting books and bills and wage slips, bags of coins even, left behind in the haste of packing. 

Nicolas glared at one of the bags as if it had done him injury. 

"My compatriot," he sneered. He had not gone to England with them, though he had better English than many of the cast. He did not miss the look of concern Laurent and Eleni shared. 

"Let me sort out these modern entanglements." He said breezily as he flipped through a few stacks with the speed of his immortal eyesight and began to toss some in the fireplace. "Keep the receipts and accounts books, anything indicating proof of payment, if former creditors come calling claiming anything. Too much trouble to kill any reliable suppliers, even dishonest ones. The rest we don't need. The important documents, title, et cetera, none of that is kept here."

Eleni and Laurent began sorting through the papers, the three of them going through the room in no time. 

"I'll take care of those." He stared at the fire and smiled, and it was neither a nice nor a reassuring smile that Eleni saw. 

They put out the fire and went in search of Felix and Eugenie in the darkened theatre halls. 

"Our playwright! Our dark genius!" Felix exclaimed in welcome from backstage. The two of them were looking through the props and costumes, trying on various combinations and exaggerations. 

"Monseigneur, bon soir," Nicolas said in greeting. He looked them up and down and then at the piles of discarded clothing, of paper swords and plaster crowns. There was powder everywhere, and wigs of many shades. He suddenly felt weary and exhausted, and the despair crept up on him. He would be this inhuman thing, trapped in amber, a ghost in the grave of his own life. Nothing new but four playmates that bordered on, what, keepers?

He dropped wearily onto a nearby trunk. Eugenie sat beside him and leaned her cheek against his shoulder in the perfect imitation of an innocent sheep herder. He laughed, surprised with himself, and caught himself mid-yawn. His eyelids were growing heavy, and perhaps it was not so bad, perhaps he was just moody from his exhaustion. He looked drowsily up at the four assembled vampires who were gathered closely around him. It was hard to keep his eyes open, and he felt his limbs growing heavy even as Felix, dressed in a priest's cassock, bent down and gently picked Nicolas up by the shoulders and beneath his knees. 

"Tomorrow," he mumbled, as Eleni folded his arms over his chest so they would not strike the walls as Felix carried him through them. "Tomorrow and tomorrow."

"What does he speak?" Laurent asked. 

"A play," Eugenie said. 

The world dimmed, and he felt a cool hand on his forehead, and an ancient memory of comfort. He was safe. And then the darkness slid over him and he melted into it. 

The four looked down at the slumbering fledgling in the wooden coffin, looking peaceful and young. 

"He had another manic fit in the dressing room," Laurent said. 

"We heard him from backstage," Felix said gravely, looking even more serious with his costume on. "The frenzy of the newly-made, the excitement. Do we think this will pass?"

"He is at least half-mad," Laurent muttered, with the ruthlessness of those Made young. "The world may have changed and he may be...artistic, but I have not seen this behavior in any but the mad."

"We inflicted much upon him," Eugenie said. 

"Few have peaceful entrees into the darkness," Felix pointed out. 

"His constitution, his mind, they were already fragile and full of drink and paranoia, before we ever took him. Lestat was responsible for that," Laurent said, not without a small measure of resentment. 

"We just finished the job," Felix supposed. "And he has devised a way for us to survive, and live in comfort, and to thrive perhaps, after all this. We are responsible for him."

"He has his moments of lucidity," Eleni said. "I do not think he can control when his madness comes upon him and what he does when it happens. It. . .he did not recall what he shouted in the dressing room, and he seemed confused when I stopped him."

"He can be easily confused," Laurent realized. "That's good. That's a relief. We have a way to control him then."

"Who speaks, then, in those fits? The madness? Is it still him, are we to glean his secret desires and plans from his ravings?" Felix asked. "You would try to control and confuse a madman to return him to sanity?"

"Perhaps a lesser madness, where we know the rules," Laurent replied. 

"And what then? Condemn him to such a shadow of coherence? We have already inflicted enough cruelties upon him," Felix said. 

"This Death shall inflict many more before it calls him to final rest," Eleni said, bringing over the coffin lid. "We can but soften the fall." She placed the lid softly and safely over Nicolas in his sleeping coffin. She looked up at the others, and at Laurent. "And we need him, if we are to survive as," her mouth twisted, "the Theatre des Vampires."

 

The next evening Nicolas thought he'd dreamed it all, that he had died and was feeling the wood of his grave. Then he remembered. He had work to do. 

He slid the lid off quietly and rose as silently as he could. He was alone in this back room. No doubt Eleni had taken them all to the stone tunnel at the end of the hall. They'd have to expand it, make vampire lodgings for their vampire coven. 

He stifled a laugh as he replaced the lid, as if he had never gone, and left the theatre silently. The thirst gnawed at him, but his purpose tonight loomed bright in his mind and he pushed that aside. 

If Lestat was going to leave. 

He had to get the theatre. 

Otherwise they might be evicted at any time. It would take longer, it would be harder, to get the money to start it, to get the title and management of income. Without it. A pang of sorrow hit him at the loss, the memory of that life tainted, the irrevocable words and promises made and the disgust and rejection in Lestat's eyes that Nicolas had never thought to find there, not in him. 

He rushed to Roget's office, banging angrily on his door to rouse him. When they were mortal, how uselessly the lawyer had tried to coax him back to the Sorbonne, bribing him with music lessons and wine, and eventually nothing but wine. Resume your studies, M de Lenfent, was that what Lestat wanted? Had all of his understanding been a lie, their conversation and golden moment self deluded islands where they could tell themselves they were no longer alone?

Suddenly he feared Lestat might have left already, might have given instructions. 

"Roget! Philippe Roget!" he shouted, banging on the wood and rattling the fine brass knobs. 

The door opened and an unfortunate dressed in a sleeping gown blinked at him uselessly.

"M de Lenfent!" Roget gasped, his brown hair a crow's nest from sleep, his face lined with weariness, and his eyes wide when they picked out Nicolas' pale ghostly face in the candlelit gloom. "H-how may I be of service?"

Nicolas pushed into the vestibule so they were not into the street, and felt the shock of warmth and blood coming from Roget's hand on his arm. It put his fangs on edge. He had not had that singular experience before, and he almost savored the discomfort as he explored and tried to decide what he thought of it. 

The man thought he was drunk, and was trying to steady him. He had never gone to Roget before, of course not, but the lawyer had made sure to keep track of where Nicolas ended up, to send him home if he was passed out at a strange tavern, to hire a coach for him before he wandered into streets where he could invite crimes upon his person. Roget thought he and Lestat foolish young men, foolish lovers besides, who needed to grow up. The money was a relief and that the lawyer understood, but he was good and he sometimes felt the man in him step up to these romantics. They ought to grow up, get married. A family would introduce stability into their lives, sober them. 

"Lestat has promised me the theatre, Renaud's," Nicolas told him excitedly. He was hungry and he thirsted and he had to run his hands through his hair because Roget was right there and there was no one around but he needed this mortal. Last week they were brothers and now he was just prey. 

"What are you talking about?" 

"Lestat changed his mind. He wants you to write to the company in London. They are to come back, end their tour there and return to the Boulevard du Temple at once! And I want the title, you know, the deed, the keys, everything! We came to, to, hah, an understanding. He has promised it to me, with the income and the property and the name, and I won't ever have to want anything from him again!" Such words to come out of such gulping breaths. Was this him?

"M de Lenfent, please, sit down, you're not well, you are upset. I'll bring some water and you can tell me--" Roget tried to wheedle, his hands hot on Nicolas' shoulders as he tried to push him into a chair and was surprised to find him immovable. 

"No! You will give me what I have asked for and what Lestat has promised, before he leaves!" Nicolas demanded. Then he gave a short, barking, and bitter laugh. "It's all that's good enough for me, all that I deserve!"

"Now look young man, I have an early morning tomorrow, so if you want to settle business, you'll have to come back then. M de Lioncourt has no plans to leave, and you are clearly drunk," Roget tried to chide. "We can sort this out in the morning. I'll fetch a coach for you."

"You fool," Nicolas hissed, grabbing his shirtfront. "Your wife upstairs and your daughter will not take a further visitation from me kindly, not the way I am now as you pointed out. Especially not after I throw their bodies out the window, so let us adjourn to your office!"

"Are you threat--"

"Yes!" Nicolas bellowed, shoving Roget at his office door. "Open this door or I will tear their throats out!"

Roget looked upstairs and unlocked his office door, meaning to lock Nicolas safely inside while he called for help. He did not count on Nicolas' strength to pull him inside as he breezed past. 

"Where are they? Where do you keep the papers?" Nicolas demanded. He had wanted to appear reasonable, to have Roget on his side as he ever was--de Lenfent the responsible one, not like Lestat, who knows where he got up to--but the man was quickly dissolving into a bag of blood that tried to squawk at him indignantly. 

"I shall not be giving you any documents nor divulging anything of my clients'" Roget said self-righteously. 

Nicolas seethed, his hands in claws, and when Roget stepped back, the violinist yanked open drawers on the lovely and enormous carved desk. Papers fluttered around him as Nicolas tried to find what he was looking for, but there was no blood but Roget's, and no papers belonging to the theatre. And it was increasingly the blood that he wanted now. 

When the last drawer was flipped and the office in disarray, Nicolas turned to glare at Roget, only to find the man stoically and imperiously unamused. He was terrified, but this was still an impetuous drunken youth, heartsick and grieving, and in no position to do anything as far as he knew. 

And all Nicolas wanted right now was the Blood. And he needed Roget, who managed the affairs and the income, who knew where the papers where. 

He would have to return. 

He rose and made swiftly for the door without another comment. He Thirsted, and he barely heard Roget's parting salvo, "the next time you drink I will not be there to watch over you!"

The blond youth went down easy and Nicolas found killing and feeding simple, instinctive, and wondered why he had felt trapped when he had done it when he was first made, like an automaton unable to feel true sensation beyond a facsimile of personhood. Now mere instinct drove him, and after the second body satiated him, this one with flaxen hair just darker than Lestat's, he realized he had blood running down the front of his shirt. When had that happened?

To his flat, then, the violinist's flat. He didn't need to break into his own house--the Les Innocents coven had left the door unlocked when they had taken him. The graveyard dirt and the evidence of struggle around the flat were such a shock of memory that he sat down in a chair by the door, staring for a moment, feeling trapped in amber again. 

Then he shook himself, the smell of his spilled mortal blood, dried and caked on the wooden floor, awakening him. He went from room to room, staring at the utter catastrophe in which it had been left. No candles had he remembered lighting. The curtains pulled down, yes, but someone had been here afterwards, and had pulled all the books down, sucked his way through every piece of art and literature and philosophy in the library, pored over the dishes and the clothes. Rifled through Nicolas' life like a haphazard inventory without regard for the weight of significance of any of the items. 

Nicolas bent down and with shaking, barely controlled hands, picked out a once favored velvet frock coat from the tangle. He took another jacket as well, and a shirt he changed into, the lace white and delicate. He thought it would be dirty, caked with soil and decay, but that had been another life, and so was this, and so did they belong. He changed into the old finery, the silken stockings that suited his calves, the breeches and the waistcoat, and pulled on the old jewels almost ironically. Let the mortals see, let them not realize until it is too late. He could pass and imitate what they had always wanted to be, and the role they had always wanted him to perform. He had always had the facility to do what they expected and desired and hoped. He had wanted something else. And now his knowledge of their expectations would be his weapon of true stealth, the subterfuge by which he stalked into their hearts and sucked the lifeblood from their world. 

Only when he was Dead would it seem like they had gotten what they wanted. And only when it was too late would they realize their folly. 

A glimmer of a presence startled him, the barest of sounds, and he suddenly recalled who had caused such destruction in the house. Dressed like a wealthy young student, he felt again like the foolish lamb for the slaughter, only this time he was equipped with fangs and such a capacity for evil, he thought. 

But he was afraid, because he remembered, and his heart shriveled in his dead chest and his breath stopped and he wanted to disappear beneath the skin of the world, to have never come here and to have never come to his attentions. And like a miracle, the angel-faced street urchin of a coven master walked right past him, within arm's reach in the hall, without a glance. Nicolas shivered with terror and longing and willed himself to be gone, to vanish. He saw the boy pause, like a ghost in the hall who is just beginning to notice the intruder, and he thought their eyes might have met. All thought fled from him in that instant when those eyes widened in recognition. 

/M de Lenfent,/ Armand whispered into his mind with a dispassionate cherubic smile. /I have been inside you. I have been walking the halls of your life. Where have you been?/

Nicolas cringed from the enormity of the coven master's person in his thoughts, and he thought disappearvanishgoawayneverexistfleewindfadegogoGO! And he opened his eyes and Armand looked puzzled and turned searchingly and looked right through him and Nicolas leapt out the open ruined window with his prizes and his tie askew and he didn't think the wind could move past him so quickly and he was at the Theatre again before he knew what was even happening. He did not bother to think on how he had suddenly and mysteriously evaded the great coven master's attention.

"Nicolas! We were. . .wondering where you were," Eugenie said in greeting when he walked onto the stage, where the four of them sat in conference. Eleni looked relieved, but Felix looked cross, as if he were a delinquent child. 

"No need to worry, my sweetlings," he said, not feeling himself as he dropped his clothing and pulled Laurent and Eleni close to him, kissing them on the cheeks in greeting and letting them feel the blood teeming in his skin. 

"We have much work to do, and I Thirsted," he explained. "Laurent, you want to enter mortal society, to have power over them, and fame? You all need to practice passing in the crowd, attending shows, seeing what makes people laugh and groan and what borders on unsettling, but just enough to keep them coming back. The energy of the performer and their relationship with the audience is something to be sucked up and felt as intimately as Blood itself."

"We will choose names for ourselves," said Eugenie, who seemed particularly excited about this. 

"Stage names or family names," Nicolas said. "Something with star quality, attractive, and something people will want to repeat. Can you all read?" They nodded. "At last. Study the playbills then. The theatre is its own world with its own rules, and the mortals are forgiving of politically sympathetic artists these days."

"Nicki?" 

He turned and told himself not to stagger at the sight of Lestat, furious, resplendently attired as he never had been in his youth and all the more handsome for it then, like a fallen angel in the rough, standing at the door to the theatre. Where the public would enter. He was no longer one of them. He had made that clear. 

"Yes, my lord?" Nicolas asked mockingly, feeling the bile and hate and anger and hurt rise in him. 

"I've been to Roget," Lestat said as he came down the aisle towards the stage, eyeing the other vampires assembled. "I have had to tell him you've lost your reason."

"What happened? Where have you been?" Eleni asked Nicolas. 

"I went to get our theatre," Nicolas replies evenly, staring at Lestat, secretly thrilled at the attention. 

"You threatened Roget and his family! You told him to write to the troupe in London and bring them back at once! You would make vampires of them all, then? You think I would--"

"What? You would deign to grace us with the property of a theatre that never really belonged to you?" Nicolas spat. "Spare me, my lord!"

"Don't call me that," Lestat said, sounding wounded. As if there could ever be a return to the way things were. 

"Ah, but proper deference must be offered! And if my lord forgets his obligations, I have no recourse but to remind his servants," Nicolas sneered, as Lestat grabbed him by his frock coat. 

"You will never have the theatre," Lestat promised him, and their faces were so close they might have kissed without turning their heads. "Not while it is in my hands, you will never have the theatre, you will never have it to bend to your twisted games, and you will never bring any member of Renaud's into Darkness! They are not to be touched!"

"You would deny them this as well? Only I have been worthy of your great Gift? Forgive me," Nicolas said, flecks of blood hitting Lestat's face from the force of his words. "But I am done with you. I cannot hope to understand you now." And yet he could not bear to say it was finished between them, and his scathing expression flinched. 

"Nicki, I--" Lestat looked pained, and he wore it exquisitely. 

"But you owe me the theatre! If you would make a mockery of everything else, of what we shared, you will give me this!"

"Me? No, I never will," Lestat growled, releasing him and shoving him away. Nicolas spun out, staggered, stopped himself against the edge of the stage. "Not until you promise me, no actor or performer will ever be harmed or slain by this new coven, no mortal will ever be harmed in the theatre, that Renaud's troupe and Roget are to be left in peace, that you will not do anything to endanger their lives or the existence of this coven!"

"Nicolas, listen to me," Eleni said, grasping him by the shoulder with one hand and smoothing his tangled hair back with the other. "The Dark Ways are old, remember? The rules are merciless."

"So?" Nicolas asked scornfully, shaking her off and looking to see if Lestat had seen. "We are in a new age. Laurent and Felix want to feed on the stage. The most sublime deception."

"And an invitation to any other coven master, granting him the right to exterminate us all," Eleni promised him, eyes wide as she fed him images of Armand rampaging through with flames. "Think of the risk. We would be easy to find, and our numbers are yet small. It would be a simple matter to put us all to the torch, and no one would say they were in the wrong. If we are to continue, if we are even to begin this, we will need to keep to the old rules still, those sacred laws."

Nicolas shuddered, the alchemy of his thoughts dissolving into fear at the sight of Armand in his mind. Eleni was touching him again, straightening his tie, rebuttoning his waistcoat as if dressing a child. Had he missed some buttons? It was hard to keep track of everything. 

"Promise me, Nicolas, please, for all of us?" she asked him, her dark eyes large and closing in on his range of vision, blocking out even Lestat from his gaze. "Do you swear to keep to the Dark Ways, to abide by those profane ancient laws that govern our kind and our covens?"

Perhaps it was her wording, Dark Ways, that old phrasing she used. "I do," he whispered, caught in her gaze. 

"For we may torment mortals, stalk them to their sleeping chambers, remind them the power of Satan and evil with blasphemous performances and seductive music, but we may not risk discovery. Do you understand?" she asked. She clasped his hands in hers and he felt oddly untethered at the touch of fingers on his wrists. 

"Yes," he heard himself saying, pinned in place by her gaze. 

"And will you refrain from allowing that sacred act of taking the blood that is our sustenance to occur beneath this roof, and thus maintain the false veneer and guise by which we lure mortals to their doom?"

"I will."

"And Laurent? Felix? Eugenie, you as well?"

The others each swore, and promised, and assented. Finally she let go of his wrists and he stifled a sigh of relief as he ran a free hand absently through his hair. It would need to be tied back. It kept falling in his face. Perhaps he had not attended it when he awoke. 

"We will do all we can," Eleni promised Lestat, but the two of them were looking at Nicolas. He scowled, and very deliberately turned his back on his former (it hurt to think that) lover. 

"Come, we have work to do, while Eleni sorts out the particulars. There is so much I have to show you!" He declared, ignoring Lestat and la Marquise, who was styling herself Gabrielle now. It suited her, he thought. 

Now he must keep busy showing his new assistants and keepers the graveyard of his follies and his youth, the family he and Lestat had shared in Paris, by choice. Perhaps then when he had explained it as if it were a banal exhibit or eccentricity, a spectacle at a traveling show, perhaps then the pain and love would seem mundane, vulgar even, and laughable, and if he exposed it for the trite and mediocre travesty it turned out to be, perhaps then he wouldn't feel like killing himself with every step he took. 

They were rehearsing what would be their first show when the psychic call resonated very faintly through Paris. The rain was warm and he stepped out, getting soaked until Felix ran out with a coat to drape around his shoulders. 

They all followed the call. There was something familiar and undeniable about it. And then he thought he would choke when they reached the Tuileries and saw the fight. The shattered glass. Lestat, some kind of monstrous avenging fair-haired demon, strangling the small body of a beautiful, angelic adolescent boy just becoming a man. It was strange to behold Armand bested by Lestat's brutal fury. There was something wrong with the tableau, and Nicolas found himself struck dumb. He hid amidst the trees with the others, watching, unable to decide who he wanted to triumph. 

If Lestat killed Armand, perhaps Nicolas would stop being afraid. It was impossible not to feel Eleni's anxiety and fear as she fretted over him and asked where he had been, had he been followed, did he see Armand, had anyone seen him feed. It was only when he threatened to never return did she stop her incessant policing. He was a man of his word, was he not? Not some peddler of broken promises.

But the thought, the certainty that Armand would return and fulfill his promise to take what was his and teach it all inescapable cruelties it must learn to serve and love and need. He was not there yet but he would be, it was only a manner of time, and it struck his very core when he recalled, like an echo from within. 

But if Armand was gone...he gripped the bark of the tree before him tightly, his knees suddenly weak. That thought was equally terrifying, and obliterated all thought and emotion when he tried to imagine it. No, no, not that. If he could exist in a permanent Limbo as a mere promise, that would be best. So when Gabrielle and Lestat picked up the small broken body, Nicolas gave a shuddering sigh of relief that Eleni mistook for fear and memory. She said nothing, watching him in her cat-like way as they returned to the theatre. But there was a click at the door behind him when he went to his coffin in the room that was his stone bedroom, a short walk down the hall and the stairs from his dressing room that had been cleared out and turned into his office. Either it was meant to him in, to prevent some imagined flight or foolishness, or it was meant to lock Armand out.

When he rose the following evening he knew something was wrong. Felix stood by his coffin, looking fearful and anxious and grave as he waited for Nicolas to rise.

"What is it?" he asked, groggy with sleep still as he had never been when he was mortal.

"I was hoping we could hunt together tonight," Felix said.

"Afraid I'll run away, M'sieur?" Nicolas asked scornfully as he climbed out of the coffin. "Eleni locked my door last night from the outside. I almost thought I'd have to ask permission to leave."

"She's very protective of you. We all care for you, Nicolas. If it weren't for you, and the things you've taught us..." Felix shook his head. "But that is not why I am here tonight. Won't you come with me and I can tell you while we are out? I Thirst as well."

"Very well," Nicolas replied, albeit testily. Felix was wary with him the entire outing, and almost in exasperation, Nicolas ventured to be discreet and solicitous with his kills, for whatever delicate sensibilities his warrior monk might have. Badly suited for the abbey but firmly spiritually devout, Felix had been sent to advise a bloodthirsty lord, who took him on many campaigns. It was inevitable that Felix should discover a hidden talent for weaponry, killing, and savagery, and that he should be equipped with such abundant Catholic training as to feel the appropriate level of guilt afterwards. Nicki tried to encourage him to invent someone new, a history and biography to tell the press and the public. They were growing in popularity, and it was looking as if the theatre might sustain itself, that this enterprise might continue. Ever more pressing, then, the need for mortal lives.

"What is it?" Nicolas tried to asked gently, as they sat by the quai after they had pushed bodies into the river. He shoved his hair from his face and fiddled with his lace cuffs.

" Eleni was called away this evening to meet with someone. I don't know who. She seemed frightened, so I asked Laurent to attend her." Felix said. 

"And?"

"They returned with a third presence who hid himself from me, and adjourned to the old main office. What do we do, if a powerful old one like that wants to join, and will not be denied, or seeks to rule us?" Felix fretted.

"Give him the brutality of self-destruction as only artists can," Nicolas replied. "If there is nothing here for him, he may leave. We have more than the skill and talent to build again. You've all shown yourselves that in the last few weeks, months."

"And if the other covens come after us?"

Nicolas pressed his lips together and studied Felix for a moment.

"Felix," he began, not unkindly, "I am not going to leave all of you for another coven or make my own way! We are passing into a new realm of being here, creating dark gods of the pantheon in every audience member's mind, a grinning Dionysius for them to embrace and fear. Why should I seek or agree to work for another coven's benefit?"

"Am I so transparent?" Felix asked, looking sheepish.

"You care very obviously about our little company," Nicki said with a shrug. He slung a companionable arm around Felix's shoulders and grinned. "But I have never seen you doubt your ability to fight off any threat except from within."

"You have put my fears to rest," Felix said slowly, looking embarrassed before returning Nicolas' casual embrace. "Shall we return to see who the visitor is?"

"Rather soon for word to be spreading of us yet, I think, but one never knows," Nicolas remarked lightly. "A patron?" As two mortal gentlemen, albeit one slightly disheveled, perhaps wealthy but drunk, they walked back to the theatre in hopeful spirits.

No one greeted them on their arrival, which was not so unusual for a company of four in a theatre of even that size. Nicolas left Felix in the back hall and went to his dressing room, now study, mind already crowding with music and ideas. They had done their work on this place, with plans to renovate, clean, and even knock down some walls. Every evening someone was in the stone tunnel crafting another section of their refuge from mortal visitors who might enter during the day.

He opened his door with a melody already humming beneath his breath, and staggered against the frame but for a moment. In a brilliant red coat, like an immaculate 18th century gentleman down to the white wig, stood a boy, a young man, whose presence blasted away all other coherent thought in Nicki's head.

Armand was looking at the papers spread on Nicki's desk and the books stacked beside them. He looked up and time seemed to slow. Nicolas mentally screamed, the panic and terror rising in his chest, unstoppable. He wanted to disappear, to run and return with no one here, and he saw Armand looking puzzled for a second, looking around himself as if he had lost track of something, before alighting on Nicolas again with that same puzzled look as if only now spotting him, contemplative and calculating before it smoothed out into that porcelain face.

"I promised Lestat you would come to no harm from me," Armand spoke first, each syllable a soft silken blow against Nicki's psyche.

"Are you sure promises mean the same thing they do now as when you learned the word?" Nicolas asked mockingly before he could stop himself. Armand's silence pinned him in place and he felt a different concerto starting in his head, oddly familiar and yet totally new.

"You will teach me about this age. You will be the music director and the playwright. I will lead the coven here and do my best to keep you from self-destruction," Armand said.

"Or you'll burn us all, and the theatre down as well?" Nicolas demanded crazily, daring him to say yes.

"As much as it tempts me," Armand said, sounding neither tempted nor amused, and Nicolas could not suppress a shudder at his coldness. So Lestat had left him to this? This dying ember to stoke? "I need this as much as you need my mastery through time. I have spoken with Eleni and Laurent already. They went to look for you."

"And how did you convince Eleni to give up her recent leadership?" Nicolas asked.

"Why were you not on the throne of this coven? You who have so much to teach?" Armand asked, rising from Nicki's chair and approaching the violinist with deliberate steps. Nicolas willed himself to stay still, staggered a step back, grasped the doorframe and seethed, glaring at Armand.

"We are not a monarchy, M'sieur," he whispered tremblingly as Armand neared him. "We live in an age of light now, when everyone has a voice and one voice can be respected for its vision and strength and will. Fail to understand that and your mastery of this coven, if you ever have it, shall slip through your grasp sooner than you realize. If we are not a republic, then at least we recognize the first among equals."

"And my mastery over you?" Armand asked, his voice low and seductive as he looked at Nicolas through his eyelashes, his cold breath ghosting over the violinist's jaw, then the shell of his ear. "Or have you forgotten already?" He pressed his lips against his neck, drawing a cringe and a shudder, and laved the skin there with his tongue very slowly, drawing out an unwilling moan from his captive. He grasped Nicolas's wrists, pinning them to the doorframe, and chuckled when Nicolas dropped a few inches, knees weakening. "I see I have scant cause for concern."

"I only-" Nicolas began to say, and stopped himself when he realized where the words were coming from. He shook his head, struggling against the remembered and the barely-remembered, the terror and the pleasure, and the cruelties and the mercies that Armand had trained him to accept and love. 

"You're mine, violinist," Armand whispered. "Do what you will with the coven, play out your little fantasies and dramas, but when I call, you know you shall come." He sank his fangs into Nicki's neck, but a taste of that dark fire, but it was enough to drive home his point. He drew back, satisfied with Nicolas' glazed and prone expression. "One way or another."

With a sudden growl, as if awakening, Nicolas looked up straight into his eyes with a glare. "You can try," he snarled, and tore himself from Armand's grasp. He staggered past him into the room and spun around to face him, ready and with his guard up. They were on more equal footing now. This time, he had the means to fight.

"Can you even imagine what we shall create with this theatre? What dark magic we can work!" Nicolas insisted. "And you, you distract us with these, these mind games!"

Armand looked at him with narrowed eyes, as if calculating, and looked about to speak when Eleni rushed upon them with a look of relief.

"Nicolas!" she said.

"What is the meaning of this?" Nicolas demanded, trying not to sound shrill.

"Our discovery was inevitable," she said placatingly, coming between the two. "And after last night, Lestat offered Armand a place in our theatre. He has explained everything." She took Nicolas by the shoulders gently, smoothing back his hair and trying to soothe him. She said in a hushed voice, as if out of respect for Armand, "he has nothing left. Don't you see? He is a shell, Lestat refused him outright, and his concession is to linger here and learn from this age, and most of all, to learn from you!"

"You don't understand. The things, in Les Innocents," Nicolas sputtered, but her disappointment made it clear that this was not a winning argument she would want to hear.

"We said that was behind us, remember? Those were done to Nicolas the mortal. You are Nicolas the Divine Violinist now, yes? You have knowledge of this age, power over him, and he has nothing. Don't you see? Look at him. He is a lost child."

Nicolas followed her gaze to Armand waiting politely in the doorway, and realized that it was true. He was at their mercy. Imagine!

"Then why does he declare himself the coven master? We agreed you would manage affairs, you have the cleverness and the will and, well, the attention span," he admitted. "We were supposed to be a republic."

"It is all he knows. And it suits his pride to be a slave to us the way a coven master is to his coven. So why not grant him the familiarity? Lestat has given him some wealth to establish him as a gentleman, and ownership of the tower. It is I who will hold the keys to the theatre, not Armand," Eleni said reassuringly. "The title is as much a shell as he is now."

"And when the boy grows up?" Nicolas asked mockingly. He ignored the giggle that rose from his chest, unbidden. It was brief and he slapped his hand over his mouth because he wanted to hear what Eleni had to say.

"He'll have learned the new ways. 'Coven master' won't matter so much anymore," Eleni said. "I promise, Nicki. And Armand has promised he will not harm you."

"It was a condition of my acceptance of Lestat's gifts," Armand interjected, mouth twisting in distaste.

"Yes, he does so like giving the rest of us his gifts, doesn't he?" Nicolas asked, alighting on some common ground at last. 

"Armand?" Eleni said urgently. He gave her a suffering look, and relented.

"Let me learn from you, M. de Lenfent. Welcome me as your coven master to lead and teach you the old ways, the secrets of enduring, just as you teach us the new ways of this age," he entreated, and his figure dissolved into one of such plaintive beauty that Nicolas almost wept, and remembered the first thing he said when he laid eyes upon the fearsome vampire.

"Fine," he said, and because he wasn't about to do anything halfway, held out his hand to shake in agreement. Armand stared at it, and Nicolas was proud of how it did not tremble, and felt some solidity return to him as it was accepted. They had their roles. All the other feelings, surely those were in the past. Armand needed him, and whole and functioning. And Eleni would be there to remind them both.

"Your education begins tonight," Nicolas said, motioning for Armand to have a seat. Eleni nodded with an approving smile, and left them with a curtesy.

"And what would you teach me?" Armand asked. "How to mimic the mortals out there who connive and gossip for the sake of la republique? How all voices are sacred and disillusioned, a host of contradictions even as they lie to themselves about the things they long for which they only know how to destroy?"

"No," Nicolas said evenly, recognizing the broken, bitter, and mocking tone reflected. "This is everything and nothing. You don't even know how to act human anymore, do you? All the petty concerns of life have distilled into no more than survival and pride with you, like a selfish child who never grew up."

"How old do you think I was when I was made?" Armand asked scornfully. Nicolas looked at him, contemplative, a faint smile of pity on his face, and for some reason it made Armand withdraw and seem to grow smaller. 

"This is a good time for you to join us. We are all of us being reborn," Nicolas told him quite earnestly. "When the revolution comes, and it will, for the nobility and the monarchy have run out of lies and circuses, and they ran out of bread a long time ago, for the church can no longer point to the lightning and shout 'quail before the wrath of the Lord' when some American has already harnessed its power, all men and women will take the right to determine who they are, who they will bow to, and grant themselves freedom."

"There have always been rulers and the ruled. Men need leaders to follow, like sheep. Those who have the fire of self-determination become leaders," Armand said dismissively. "The rest follow. You cannot have a society of leaders."

"A society of equals. Recognizing a leader amongst them, but equal to their own potential in right and dignity, albeit not ability. Don't you see? This gives everyone a chance. No one asked the blind boy what he was good for, only that he couldn't till the field. We are all just learning what we are capable of, and we are willing to try anything."

"And you think children fumbling around in the dark, choosing the greatest bully among them, will lead to anything different?"

"It will be different!" Nicolas declared. "We are in it with open eyes and open tongues. We talk too much and challenge any who would silence us. The people have been kept silent too long with lies. Now they can see for themselves and take the fruit of their own labors. They will be free."

"And how does the theatre figure into this model of liberty? What role do you see for us?"

"Why, at this very moment of redefinition, we will insinuate ourselves into the fabric of new society. We will be a flavor of evil in a world that is no longer afraid of God. Let us take that pedestal before any other concept does, and become more intimate than any devil shunned!"

Armand's brow furrowed in confusion, but Nicolas took it as encouragement to elaborate, his voice rising in volume and excitement. 

"No more fear of God or King or priest or lord. But evil will always have a role, and it will find its embodiment somewhere. Let us be that evil. Let us be seductive, let us be decadent and elegant and sublime. Let us be welcomed into hearts and homes and beds and boudoirs, our names and likenesses decorating mirrors, inspiring them to lascivious gleeful imitation, so as to create imitations we can hide among. Let us the be worst kind of evil, the unsuspected bit of fun that rots the body from the inside out, celebrated in society, known to all almost to the point of being mundane, perhaps even a comfort in contrast to the grand guignol of life, and so pervasive that when we take our victims in the salon everyone applauds at the dedicated play acting! Our presence in each heart and mind will make the moment of our triumph all the easier and sweeter. Cultural prominence and prevalence will give way to political and martial, until we define the mortals who would have defined their own worlds. In this way is there not a more insidious and pervasive way to infect all of a newly born society?

"No fear. No pain. Just visit those white faces at the theatre and the world will never hear of your suffering again," Nicolas finished softly, staring off into the distance. "A new evil for a new era."

"You will need me then," Armand said, though he sounded a little in awe. "If we are to be the cultural phenomenon you describe, more than a few covens will come knocking for our destruction."

"Good," Nicolas replied with an unkind smile. "We'll take what's left of them after you're through knocking them in the fire."

"And the plays? And our personas? Who would we be?" Armand asked almost in a small voice. 

"Mortals playing at vampires playing at mortals!" Nicolas declared. "The others are choosing their own names, their own histories, and the inconsistencies we can smooth out with my knowledge of the world and their desire to be entertained with the illusion. We shall be their confidantes! Their dinner guests! We shall secure membership in the guilds and be like a respectable theatre until we tear their throats out in their carriages."

"Never at the theatre," Armand reminded him. 

"Never at the theatre," Nicolas mimed in disgust. 

"So what is to be our first endeavor?" Armand asked politely. 

"Ah!" Nicolas turned to the stacks of paper and books. "I have a few candidates. We were practicing. You can help with the--"

"I will never agree to appear on stage," Armand said firmly, in a way that made Nicolas look up from the papers and give him his full attention. "I will preside. I will never perform. Is that understood?"

"Oui," Nicolas said, his mouth going dry. The tone made other parts of him shudder, and shakily he went back to the excitement of the plays and the music. "For our opening act, we'll have..."

It was easy to talk as if Armand wasn't there, as if he was planning out everything in a whirlwind of ideas, fire, blood, magic. He didn't know how long they were at it, Armand listening quietly and politely, until Eleni came by to say that Lestat was here. He was leaving this very night. 

Very carefully Nicolas put the pages down and pushed them aside. He looked up at her querulous expression, as if uncertain, and beyond to the golden-haired angel behind her. Their eyes met and Nicolas tried not to flinch. 

There was nothing more to say between them. Anything else either one could add was just going to be embarrassing and awkward at this point. Old ground trodden and retrodden. They had enough masochism to do that on their own time. No need to air it for the rest of them, surely. 

He stood beside Laurent and the others as Eleni accepted the keys to the theatre. Armand politely accepted the keys to the tower and some money from Lestat and some faint assurances were given. Nicolas couldn't look at Lestat--his eyes kept going to the gilt carriage that awaited, the spokes painted a bright red. He'd met Lestat in a red coat. Laurent put an arm protectively around his shoulders and he looked up. Lestat was awkwardly trying to help his mother into the coach, but she would have none of it, hopping in herself and ignoring his hand. Nicki's maker, lover and friend and confidante no more, looked nonplussed and gave a faltering, jaunty wave at the assembled theatre company. Nicolas glared. Let him come back if he dared. He didn't know what he preferred anymore, that Lestat should never return or that he should stay and wait while...while what? Nicolas gathered the fragments of his wits back together? If that's really what he even wanted. If that was really even what the matter was. 

"It's finished, then," he breathed to himself, sagging as he watched their coach disappear down the street. 

"You're free. We're free," Laurent said softly against his ear, arm solicitous around Nicki's shoulders. 

Nicolas met Armand's gaze and tried not to be the first to blink. "To business, then."

The first few nights, Armand left them mercifully alone. He watched from the boxes as they rehearsed, and even came down to advise the construction of their private catacombs. He knew all about security, after all. 

Nicolas usually found himself slowing down before the others did, drowsy and foggy with sleep as the dawn approached. He was never alone when it happened. Like a child, he let Felix scoop him up and carry him to his coffin, his words half-uttered from frenetic lips if he was in the middle of excited thought, otherwise he might never stop. If he was thinking or listening to the others, Eleni or Laurent would be the first to notice his sluggishness as his eyes drooped, and they'd coax him towards his sleeping room. No one wanted to risk leaving him alone at dawn, perhaps prone or too distracted to seek shelter for himself. 

Yet he had his privacy when he awoke to hunt, and his fear of Armand's power kept him in check and focused on his kills. The pyre and a nameless terror from Les Innocents were with him still in those early days, and sometimes Eleni caught him backing away from them suddenly, before remembering they were all vampires here and all one coven. It happened less and less now, but the tremor never failed to pass through him when Armand arrived for the evening. They met at eight or nine, usually, and Armand would not arrive until ten or sometimes midnight. No one knew where he went, and Nicolas did not want to follow. He was caught up in the theatre's work besides. Their first week's performances had gone well. The audience was unsettled, but gossiping, each trying to outdo the other in their tolerance of the macabre. Nicolas resolved to transform the pantomime and street acrobatics into sublime dramatics and dark arts, and he poured himself into pages of black ink. 

The routine was easy to fall into, waking, hunting with care, enduring Eleni or Armand's inspection and interrogation, then writing and directing and composing until he dropped to the floor. Presumably F‚àö¬©lix carried him to his coffin, so Eleni said. Armand kept his distance, until the third week. 

When Nicolas woke, the coven master was waiting at his door. He stumbled out of his coffin, tripping over the side, and backed against the wall. 

"Bon soir," he said automatically, groping for something to say. He could not think clearly yet, and the hunger drove him. 

"Bon soir," replied Armand, inclining his head in greeting. He was dressed simply, white shirt, black coat, black breeches, white silk stockings on supple calves. He looked like a faded version of the boy who had tried too hard to look real, in that red coat and wig.

"To what do I owe this visit?" Nicolas asked, rather proud of how even his voice was. 

"A peace offering," Armand said, but his huge brown eyes looked hungry as they watched Nicolas straighten the mess of his hair and his clothes. So hard to keep track of everything at once. 

"A peace offering," Nicolas repeated under his breath, painfully aware the door was just beyond. And Blood. There was Blood. 

"You thirst. Come. Let us hunt. Then I will show you," Armand said, arm going around Nicolas' waist. He felt a flash of fear, Les Innocents, the pyre, the fire, those promises, and something else he couldn't recall anymore. Something as lost as his mortal life. And then Armand would burn him if he did not comply. He shuddered, and Armand smiled. "Come," he repeated, undeniable. 

They were like wraiths in the night as they prowled, and Nicolas thought it terribly funny, how two creatures so full of darkness and evil could be left behind with one another by the same light that they craved. He sat down on a rooftop and held his sides as he laughed, and not even when the blood tears ran down his face and Armand shook his shoulders furiously could he stop. He couldn't stop, there was no stopping. He'd go on and on, in this haze of blood--a great blow knocked him to his side and he choked, hands out to stop his fall. His cheek stung and with it came the memory of pain and the threat of fire. 

Armand had slapped him. Armand was angry. Good. It felt good, to spark this in someone, especially someone as determinedly controlled as Armand. He was standing with his fists to either side of him, glaring down at Nicolas. Then he softened, leaned down and grabbed Nicki's hand to pull him standing. With quick motions before Nicolas could even react, Armand brushed his clothes clean and tidy, and tied back his curly hair, albeit with sharper tugs than necessary. He quickly looked presentable. 

"Come," was all he said, but Nicolas heard the threat in his voice and this time the Thirst was too strong for him to indulge in a bit of black and bitter humor. 

The kill was fast, and the Thirst was too strong for him to deny and Armand was there so surely he could cover for Nicolas as an elder, what was it he said, he could teach? Nicolas could provide so many teaching opportunities, oh yes. The two thieves they found were dissolute, desperate, and Nicolas was as well, for he ignored the stab in the side one gave him before tearing his throat out messily, so much blood, he had to get to the source, there it was, that sweet pulsing everything that his world was dimming into. Was Armand watching--suddenly something lurched into him, something familiar, a death he had longed for for so long, and yet just a shadow of it still. He felt his body buckle from the blow as the mortal's death went into him, and the cobbles came up under his back as he fell onto his knees and then his side. 

His world was bright and dim with color, and he felt himself afloat, about to leave. Yes, yes, finally. This was freedom to die without being given the choice. He saw a beautiful boy stand above him, red brown hair, fine clothes, angry, no, that furrowed brow, was it concern? He looked up and around them and back down at Nicolas with worry. 

Nicolas reached up for him languidly, his eyes limpid and his fingers outstretched. No worries. Just peace. Death here, moving on. Come with me. 

He must have made a sound. The boy, young man really, looked back down at him and his gaze softened. He knelt and gathered Nicolas to him, and kissed his lips softly. He was licking the blood from his face and his neck, and kissing him with soft lips. Yes, yes, we are the same, aren't we? Nicolas accepted his kisses, his tongue like a cat's, scraping softly against his skin, inside his mouth, sucking every drop of blood clean. And then he bent and Nicolas' head fell back and the sharpness came into his neck and he whined, his legs giving a small kick before a squeeze from the boy forced him to still. The boy. Armand. Armand was feeding from him!

"Stop," he struggled to say, his hands useless as they tried to push against the coven master. 

To his surprise, he was released, and Armand gazed down at Nicolas in his arms with a frown. What was it he wanted? But then Nicolas grunted, there was a sharp pain in his side knitting up and Armand had taken the blood meant for it, not a lot, but he was a fledgling still and felt sore and tender in the stab wound. Armand set him on his feet and steadied him and inspected him and he realized he had been laughing softly this entire time, and Armand watched him carefully as he slid two hands over his mouth to stop himself but it kept coming, those hysterical sounds and why not, he--Armand shook him, slapped him. The laughter cut off and he staggered, hand to his cheek. He glared back at Armand, the laughter silenced, nowhere to be found, and he was afraid to reach for it in case he could not stop. 

"We do not take the Death into us," Armand pronounced evenly. 

"Yes, it makes us prone to all kinds of attentions from little coven masters," Nicolas answered mockingly, turning his head away so he would not have to see the look of anger mar Armand's perfect face. 

"Do not try my patience, M de Lenfent," Armand told him. "I come to you tonight in all good faith."

"Yes, a peace offering, you said," Nicolas replied. "So much for good faith. What does that even mean for creatures such as you?" He put a hand to his side and winced. He was healing, but it still was sore. And he clearly bled through his shirt and his coat. 

"You're injured?" Armand asked in concern. He shoved Nicolas' hand aside and inspected the healing wound. "We can get you new clothes where we are going."

"And where are we going?" Nicolas asked curiously, feeling Armand's hands prodding at him, flashing on fire and pain and blood and laughter in Les Innocents. Would he ever remember what had happened? Would he ever forget how it felt?

"You'll see," Armand replied enigmatically, his face a cipher as always. He looped an arm through Nicki's and tugged him along, over the Pont St. Michel and into his old neighborhood. Ile St. Louis. They came to his darkened house and Armand unlocked the door with a key he then handed to Nicolas. 

"A peace offering," Nicolas echoed blankly, staring at the key and then the door. He felt a shadow of himself, a ghost, and he half-forgot he was a vampire. This creature standing before him gave nothing but undeniable fear every second Nicolas was beside him, and it was all he could do to pretend to be someone he supposed was himself, though even that he did not know anymore. 

"I imposed upon your quarters and created quite a mess," Armand said as if he were any other gentleman. "Allow me to remedy that. If you'll show me where everything ought to be, I shall restore it as it was."

"You want to know why I have those things. Why I read those books, what all of it means," Nicolas realized out loud. "This is a learning opportunity."

"A peace offering," Armand said flatly, but Nicolas' insight had unbalanced his conviction. He was accustomed to easy deception. This age was different. 

"Whatever," Nicolas said flippantly, brushing past him to enter the dark hallway. He climbed the stairs and then had to sit down suddenly. The chair placed there was still there. Only he was changed. Not a ruin, the way the rest of the house was, with the scent of old candle wax and crypt soil everywhere. But he had been shattered too, then preserved in amber. He stared at his hands and then at the hallway and the pictures that lay on the floor, pulled down from their walls. 

Armand waited patiently behind him. 

He was a ghost. He wasn't here anymore, he was insubstantial and they would wander the rooms until others came and put them to rights and sold the house and a new owner moved in, perhaps a family. It had more than enough rooms for that. And he would be their ghost. He stared down at his hands again. They were ghostly white and he thought he might begin to weep, for wasn't that what ghosts did?

A hand on his shoulder made him jump and he turned to see Armand's white face in the gloom, concerned. Then the coven master's hand came up and he lit one of the many candles that had been stuck in their own wax, all along the floor, Nicolas realized. With a simple twist Armand tugged it free, scratching the wax off in a blur of movement, and stuck the candle into a nearby sconce. 

"I left it in quite a state, walking inside you," Armand said, and Nicolas wasn't sure he was talking about the house anymore. "Help me put it back together."

So that was it. Armand thought he could, could mend what he had done, and in the process learn even more about the age and about Nicolas. He held out his hands in front of him again, pawing at the air limply, and Armand frowned, ducking out of the way and coming up behind him. 

"M de Lenfent," he said softly in that silken voice. "Won't you give me a tour of the rooms?"

"I'm a ghost," Nicolas said helplessly, pawing at the air again, then turned around and felt Armand's cold face. "Are you a ghost too?"

"In a fashion," Armand admitted, permitting the fledgling this liberty. "Does M'sieur live here? Won't he show me the way?"

Nicolas nodded absently, then turned and glided along the hall, fingertips grazing the plaster molding and the polished carvings of the furniture as he passed them. Beside him, Armand dislodged the scattered candles and replaced them in the sconces, lit, with a vampire's speed. It was as if he swept the floor behind Nicolas as he wandered. They came to the library, where candles dribbled everywhere and books lay scattered on the floor. 

Nicolas made a keening sound and went onto his knees, digging around in the pile for something. 

"What are you looking for?" Armand asked curiously. He hung a painting back on its hook and began to go through the piles of books, straightening them as he went so they could be placed back on the shelves. 

"That's not right," Nicolas said lightly, and it sounded so normal and level in tone Armand sat back on his heels and stared as Nicolas glanced through Armand's order and rearranged the titles rapidly. He shoved shelf after shelf of books back on their shelves, following an order Armand couldn't deduce even as he studied Nicolas' preternaturally quick tidying. 

"M'sieur," he ventured, "in what order do the books sit, so that I might assist?"

Nicolas hummed under his breath, looking between the two books he held in his hands. "Relevance, M'sieur, relevance. The ones I refer to the least I place on the top or bottom. The self indulgent ones are on the top, so one must stretch to earn them. The ponderous tomes can support the rest. Do you see?"

"But how can I know what M. finds relevant?" Armand asked. "I barely understand why the topics of the day matter."

Nicolas gave him a steady, entirely sane look, and folded his arms in thought. "M'sieur, you have not spent enough time with the coffeehouses and taverns, with the latest thoughts and talk of the year. You have no references to introduce you. I can provide those. I know what manner of anonymity does not arouse suspicion." He turned to his books again and finished the stack. "Did you think you could understand the age, and him, by gleaning all you could from these pages?" he asked, hands blurring as the reassembled another shelf. "It is context you lack. Centuries wasted in an obsolete cemetery that even the city of Paris has abandoned. You must go out in the world with me."

Armand looked nonplussed, lost, as he watched Nicolas busily tidy up the library. Had they been wrong about Nicolas? Was the Blood strengthening his nerves? Had it all merely been the first feverish nights of a newborn fledgling, and not true fatal madness after all?

"What about the others?" Armand asked hollowly. "Do they require the same guidance?"

Nicolas cocked his head to one side in thought as he examined a Livy and an Aristotle. "No, they look old enough to not require a chaperone to start a conversation. But surely M'sieur looks bewitching enough to draw attention and can cast his illusions to deflect the wrong kind?"

"Oui..." Armand said slowly, growing more uncertain about Nicolas' madness. But Allessandra had been lucid at times, too. As if she had never been mad. 

"There! Why do you separate these books from the others? And why is that bust of Aristotle here?" Armand almost cried out, desperate for footing and context despite himself. Nicolas seemed to completely disregard him, as if he were a nobleman's child, to be indulged but not sought out. 

"These are fiction. Novels. Long pieces of prose," Nicolas explained slowly, fine fingers gliding over them fondly. "Here are works of philosophy." He smiled, and the simple pleasure in it caught Armand's breath. Easy to see what had drawn Lestat to him, obvious beauty aside. A deep fire glow lit him from within, somber and complex, but as rich and passionate as any exuberance from Lestat, and all the more precious when directed benignly. "Nearly fiction, I suppose. But we do strive to separate reality from fantasy. These scientific and mathematical studies, they are here in this case, do you see?"

How ordered Nicolas was. What had they done? What had Armand done here?

"And the bust of Aristotle? And these paintings?"

Nicolas made a face. "The paintings, sent to me. I don't mind them and they are inspired, but for their source. Jeanette and Lucinda made me hang them up. Said my place was too sparse." He sighed heavily, then brightened. "I confess a fondness for Aristotle, you know?" Nicolas rapped the marble bust's forehead in a friendly way, smoothing away the last of the wax Armand had left on it in his previous visit. Something caught his eye and he frowned, slowly drifting towards the gleaming harpsichord. Too late, Armand saw and smelled the grave dirt, the corpse pit rags left behind. From where Nicolas stood it must have been suffocating, because he had his hands held out before him and Armand leapt forward to cover his mouth before his shrill scream could wake the neighbors. Nicolas jerked wildly, trying to bite his hand, struggling against his iron grip frantically.

What memories it must trigger. Armand hadn't considered this could occur. As he ducked a wild flying elbow, Nicolas squirming and now sobbing, he realized, he should have cleaned away the remnants of the attack before they came here tonight. 

"No, no, let go of me, release me, dear God, don't kill me, why won't you let me go?" Nicolas was sobbing brokenly from behind Armand's hand, and he tried to maneuver the struggling violinist away. The smell followed them, however, and he realized he would have to open the windows at least. 

But Nicolas was inconsolable, lost in his recent past. He could feel their cold sucking mouths surrounding him, their fangs sinking in again and again in a whirlwind of agony as they beat him with every movement and sound he made. He was lost, utterly lost, and nothing made sense any more, as if this was the only world he had ever known. The fear, the panic, paralyzing him just as much as their fangs did, while they cackled and laughed at his screaming face, held his thrashing limbs in painful vise-like grips, and took him over and over. Stone fists slamming against soft mortal skin, blood blossoming to the surface to form bruises. These perfect white faces in the rags of the dead and the hair of demons, matted with that stench of decay and death and putrefaction that made him vomit in his mouth with the nausea. Such sheer terror, and all he could do was fight and struggle in vain. Nothing to beg for. Lestat, abandoning him, keeping him like some pet in a gilded cage, would he be angry that this had happened to his gifts? Was that all he cared for now? The pain in his heart splintered at this thought as it struggled to meet the demands of so many feeding mouths, to pump enough blood to satisfy the pull. He would die. There was no God he could beg for and the only person who still mattered in his life would rather send him glittering jewels than deign to send a single word: I'm safe, I must hide, we are finished, anything would have been better than the snide silence of endless gifts of luxuries Nicolas had never cared for, and Lestat knew it!

The perfect face of a boy angel, a youth, appeared in his vision as his hands were clamped to his sides. Why was he here? It wasn't safe!

"Shh," said the boy, bringing up a finger to his lips, and despite himself Nicolas stopped his screams, reduced to whimpering sobs. "You must hide from them!" And suddenly Nicolas was released and the boy was not there but he could feel their rotten breath on his neck and his limbs ached and he ran, he ran and slipped and skidded and he shoved himself under the bed, but they would drag him out, it was happening, hands and fangs on his ankles, cruelly deepening the wounds with their tugs, or had it happened already? He scrambled out, flung open the doors of the armoire and clambered in, shutting himself up in silence and darkness. Quiet here. No hellish screams. No corpse dirt. He would wait. He'd wait until they were gone. He drew his knees up to his chest and rocked himself gently, waiting, shuddering occasionally. His guardian angel had saved him, surely. And yet he longed for the oblivion of the bite. And for Lestat. 

Outside, Armand was satisfied with his ruse. He flung open the French windows in the library and swept out all the last remnants of the Les Innocents attack. He did the same with the bedroom, where he could hear broken snatches of prayer and sobbing from the armoire. So that's where Nicolas went. At least he was quiet, locked in the private terror of his own hallucination. Armand was not about to root around in the fledgling's mind for that. It was hard enough grappling with him--fledgling or not, Nicolas still had Lestat as his maker, and Magnus' powerful blood as his grand-sire. What it had taken Eleni decades to reach, Nicolas had been blessed with overnight. Armand hoped he was not truly mad, or it would make controlling him so much harder. 

He hurried through the rest of the house, picking up scraps of rags and dirt, opening windows. How had they missed it coming in? Or in the library when they put away the books? Perhaps Nicolas had been too focused on his books to notice. He had walked through the place like a ghost, until the bookcases sent him in the direction of the state he'd been in before the Les Innocents coven visited. Perhaps even saner. Certainly not drunk. 

Satisfied that he'd cleared out the last of any triggering elements, Armand headed back to the bedroom to release Nicolas from the armoire. He wasn't there. The doors hung wide open, and the fledgling was nowhere to be found. 

"M. de Lenfent?" They were not yet so familiar, or Nicolas could not remember them being so familiar, as to be using Christian names yet. 

He heard a muffled sound. It was very faint. He followed it back through the library and into the study, where he found Nicolas scrunched into the cabinet at the bottom of a book display bureau. He gasped when Armand forced open the locked doors, and put his hands out blindly. He was still trapped in his nightmare. 

Armand grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him out, then gave him a shake. 

"M'sieur de - - Nicolas! Wake up!" He commanded. "You're safe now."

Gradually Nicolas' terrified expression cleared, and he stopped panting in fear. He looked down at Armand in wonder, making him distinctly uncomfortable as if he were presiding over the old dark rites again, then looked around them. His eyes seemed to refocus and he backed away out of Armand's loosened grasp. 

He narrowed his eyes, then shrugged to himself and spun around to inspect the ruined study. Armand noticed the blood on his side and remembered partially why they had come here. 

"Will you pack a valise with your clothes? A few to keep at the theatre?" Armand asked solicitously, as if Nicolas did not have dried trails of ghastly blood tears marking his cheeks. as if he hadn't just broken down in his own home, chased by ghosts and demons of Armand's making.

"Afraid I'll abandon my creation so soon?" Nicolas asked, and all too soon the rough mocking edge was back in his tone. He bent and in a blur of movement, trashed the papers scattered around, tidying up the study without explaining what was important and what wasn't. 

"I can assist," Armand told him. This was not going the way he had planned. He had thought they could walk through these rooms, that Nicolas could patiently explain to him, or at least synthesize his understanding of what Armand would need to know. And Nicolas would see there was nothing more to fear, and perhaps he'd show Armand this world and this time. Perhaps they could be companions, lovers, if he'd let him. It felt very important, to have his consent and his respect rather than his fear and his conquest, as when he was a mortal, if the theatre was to function with these founding members intact. If Armand were entirely honest with himself, he might admit he simply wanted Nicki's love, the sum total of all the attentions this passionate fledgling could devote to him that Armand had seen him devote to his music. Here was another artist for him to follow, another who would break his heart.

"He thinks he's doing me a favor, leading me through a tomb, a graveyard of my life," Nicolas muttered to himself as he worked, in such a low breath Armand had to strain to hear him. "When I'm barely a ghost passing through." He set the rest of the study to rights and sat back in his chair, heels crossed on the desktop. 

"What would you ask of me, O Master?" He asked, nothing but mockery and sarcasm in his voice. "What does my coven master desire?"

Armand took a breath, reminding himself of the promise he made Lestat. 

"Why did you keep a study at all? Why toss away those sheets of music? Didn't you want to keep them?" Armand asked. 

"They weren't very good. I can make more music, better music. It's alive, it's not like words or pictures that get pressed onto a page or a canvas and die there, like insects for display. You can't keep the music," Nicolas said, eyebrows rising, and Armand knew he wasn't talking about the music, not really. "It is too inventive, it needs to find ways to breathe, to express and be free. And surely you had workshops and rooms in whatever primordial age you crawled out of. A study is no different, is it not?"

"Yes, but why do /you/ keep a study?" Armand asked. "You don't seem to care where you work. Why keep this place?"

Nicolas looked at him silently. Perhaps he had not expected such a direct question. Perhaps the answer was too painful to voice. There must have been a million bitter sarcastic remarks he could have made. Instead Armand stood before him like a schoolboy before a schoolmaster's desk, waiting to hear why he'd asked the wrong question. 

The violinist sprang to his feet and swiftly reached the bedroom, where he pulled out a small leather satchel and began stuffing clothes in it. Fine silks, velvets, linens, Lestat had dressed him well and he had been brought up with such clothes, putting them on sadly by instinct. And he couldn't bring himself to get different ones tailored, really. He could never be really bothered, not when he berated Roget for information from Lestat at every visit, flinging his coins back at his feet, not when the only thing he did at the theatre was play what he was told to play and spend the rest of the time drinking what they would permit him before someone made sure he got home. Routine, that was all he had, the dullness of existing until the light of his life would return. Surely, he hoped, there was a meaningful explanation, an answer that would wipe all this anguish and betrayal away. 

It never came. He sat down on the newly-made feather bed with his head in his hands, and ran his fingers through his hair. What was he even doing here? What was Armand doing here? His strangely hungry gaze as he studied Nicolas was increasingly alarming.

"I promised Lestat not to kill you. And I mean you no ill will," Armand said, trying to draw him out again. "Out of a mere shell you have created a new framework for us to exist in and spend our energies in. Your creativity and knowledge of this age is something we need. We have all been out of the world too long, as fine mimics as we are."

Nicolas gave a long and shuddering sigh, and shrugged out of his bloody coat, then his ruined shirt. He must have heard what Armand had said earlier after all. It was so difficult to tell with this fledgling. Armand held his breath, admiring his smooth chest in the candlelight, the tight muscles in the belly and the slender toned arms. How he would love to run his hands over that skin, feel it move and flush under his touch. Lestat must have reveled in Nicolas' intensely focused attentions. Their early frolics and romps in bed as young mortals no doubt consumed them with such desire as to easily shut out whatever darkness surrounded them.

Un-self-consciously, Nicolas picked out a white linen shirt and slipped it on, buttoning it and tucking it in haphazardly before shrugging on a sapphire blue coat with small pink roses embroiled on the hems. 

"May I?" Armand tsked despite himself, and in the manner of a coven master caring for a child, rebuttoned Nicolas' shirt, tucking it neatly into his breeches. The object of his attentions looked startled.

"Merci. So much to keep track of all at once," Nicolas said absently as he turned to close the valise, to Armand's surprise. So it was not deliberate. Nicolas couldn't keep track of certain things, couldn't heed certain things, despite his periods of lucidity.

Armand tugged Nicolas around again to face him, then retied his cravat and straightened his lace cuffs peeking out from the sleeves of his coat. His hands lingered on Nicolas' wrists, stroking the thin skin there, and in a moment of impulsivity, he yanked Nicolas down and tilted his head to the side, exposing his neck. Magnus' blood. Lestat's blood. Nicolas' blood. The power and the secrets it held tantalized him, and he realized he had been given a second chance.

Something inside Nicolas screamed at him in fear of being in Armand's grasp, and he stumbled backwards, dislodging himself. The room felt too close, and he loosened the cravat around his neck despite Armand's earlier efforts.

"I would have you love me," Armand said bluntly, though he looked up at the frightened fledgling through his eyelashes and made himself as alluring as possible. "To give me what Lestat would not. To be my companion. The theatre doesn't matter--"

"Of course it matters!"

"I would toss it aside if you decided it was no longer worth your while. You are all that matters here."

"Desperation doesn't suit you. I think I almost preferred it when you--"

"Be careful what you wish for. You're all alone now, with not even God to pray for this time. What else do you have but the attention I offer?"

"Is that why you wanted to learn about my mortal life? To find a reason for me to choose to be with you? Why not walk with me in the street?" he asked, making an effort to sound gentle. Armand's face was placid once more, unreadable. Nicolas swallowed. "You wanted to know more about me? No, no, you wanted to know why he wanted me. Why he kept me like this and mooned from afar, if what he says is true, wallowing in his own supposed loneliness when the entire time all I wanted was for him to bring me to him! I'm interesting to you only because I had once been his!"

"That is not true!" Armand protested, and Nicolas backed away from his hands at his shoulders. 

"You are beautiful and deadly," Nicolas declared. "But I will not, I will never, not with you. I need no one's attention but my own, and I make my own destiny now. I won't be a proxy for him and I certainly won't to you, if that's all I am to you."

"You are mistaken. You are the playwright, the composer, the director of the theatre now. You hold the keys to our future in your hand. I will preside over all our affairs, so is it any wonder that I seek to understand you? Nicolas? If you refuse me your companionship, then I would have us at least be colleagues. We have much to learn from each other, you and I. I would have you call me Armand and I would call you Nicolas. I would have us be friends." He felt the terrible sense of exposure, of desperate longing, and a spark of anger and hate flashed against the fledgling that could do this to him.

Finally, this explanation seemed to satisfy Nicolas, for he deflated, coming back down from tiptoes and fidgeting with his hair again. "There is nothing here for you, M'sieur." The final word he emphasized, producing a flinch in Armand. 

"Then let us return," Armand said softly, resettling his mask.

When they reached the theatre Nicolas dumped the bag at his dressing room, resolving again to clear everything out and set up an office there. Armand disappeared, which suited Nicolas well. He bumped into F√©lix and gave the perplexed vampire an exaggerated bow, one toe pointed out wards.

"We were wondering when you would be back. Did you go somewhere with Armand?"

"We went to haunt a birdcage of gold," Nicolas answered carelessly.

"I took another look at the stone tunnel," F√©lix said, accustomed to Nicki's occasional idiosyncratic answers. Sometimes he suspected they were intentionally erratic rather than the mental slips of a madman. "It is as you said. We can build a multi-level inverted dwelling, to keep us safe while mortals work on the theatre in the day. It need not be a single cellar."

"Good, lets draw up plans. Laurent was apprenticed to an architect. He can draft the initial construction schematics," Nicolas replied approvingly.

"Where do we get paper? Eug√©nie and Eleni swept everything, threw away all the old dried up paints and unusable paintbrushes where you told us to. I disassembled what costumes could be salvaged and burned the rest in the fireplace. Laurent put as much in order as he could backstage, but we don't understand what half of it is. The rooms are empty but you will have to tell us what to do," Felix reported dutifully.

"And so I shall," Nicolas said, putting an arm around his shoulders. He found the others puzzling over coins.

"Money was forbidden in the old coven," Eug‚Äö√†√∂¬¨¬©nie said in a hushed voice as she traced the edge of one coin.

Only Laurent seemed in any way enthusiastic. "How much is this? I have seen them exchanged for goods and services, but how much makes up one of these? How does this paper money work?"

Nicolas laughed outright and Felix glowered at him. He did not approve of currency, it would seem.

"This is a louis, it's 24 livres. This is an ‚Äö√†√∂¬¨¬©cu, it's 6 livres. Let us see, ah, this is a sou. One ‚Äö√†√∂¬¨¬©cu is, oh, 120 sous, but you can get 60, 30, and 15 sous worth denominations too. Like so. These are deniers. Like dinars? Same. 12 deniers to a sou. 120 sou to an ‚Äö√†√∂¬¨¬©cu. 4 ‚Äö√†√∂¬¨¬©cus to a louis," Nicolas lectured, stacking the equivalencies for them on the table. 

"And the paper money? It's not made of any gold or silver," Laurent said doubtfully. 

"Backed by it, though. And it only comes in livres," Nicolas said, holding up a few sheets. 

"Actions au porteur?" Eugenie read slowly. 

"Don't worry yourself about it," Nicolas decided. "Trust in the coin of the realm," he added, not without bitterness. 

"How much should I be paying for an apple?" Felix asked. 

"Why would you need to buy an apple?" Nicolas laughed.

"We can just steal one, like anything else!" Laurent declared. 

"We shouldn't steal everything. And some things must be purchased," Eleni chided. 

"We will be actors! Not thieves," Eugenie declared. 

"The crown bases money on gold and silver. I base the worth of these coins on apples," Felix explained, slowly and stubbornly. "It is how I understand things. Small things first. Apples and coins."

"An apple-backed currency!" Nicolas laughed outright, holding his belt and slapping the table, jarring the coins slightly. "How many apples makes a hired coach? What happens if you need to buy a pear?"

"Mock me if you will!" Felix said over the sound of the other four dissolving into laughter. "Until I sell the entire theatre for a, a, a vegetable!"

"A few coppers, Felix, that's all," Nicolas said finally, recovering and wiping his mouth as if to slide the laugh away. "You can read the thoughts of the mortals around you, can't you? They'll as good as tell you whether they are cheating you."

Felix picked up a few deniers, a few silver and gold coins, and pocketed them in his new black frock coat. 

"A coach ride would only be a few sou, depending on how far you went," Nicolas said with a fond smile, but Felix was already turning his back to them and leaving the theatre. 

"Let him be. He's proud," Eugenie said softly as they heard the door close. 

"He'll be back. Even under Les Innocents we would mock his seriousness and he would storm off for a night, but he would always return to sleep in the crypts," Laurent told Nicolas. 

"He doesn't need to sleep in grave dirt anymore," Nicolas murmured, looking in the direction Felix had gone. "He never has to come back at all." Not like Nicki. 

"He will return," Eleni said firmly. 

"Come," Laurent told Nicolas, and placed a hand on his shoulder, making him jump and startling him from his reverie. 

He turned and seemed not to recognize them for a moment, his face dissolving into an expression of horror as he flung his hands out before him. 

"No, no, no," he moaned, backing away from them. "Leave me be!"

"He's having another--" Eugenie began, before a dry scream erupted from Nicolas' mouth. 

Eleni grabbed him by the shoulders and Laurent clamped a hand over his mouth, making him kick and writhe immediately. 

"Nicki, it's me! It's me, we will never hurt you again!" Eleni said as Nicolas began to sob in desperation, struggling still and giving them a hard time with the sheer blood strength he possessed. He tried to shake his head, his weeping eyes closed, lost in the memories and the flashback. 

"Eugenie, grab his legs, he keeps kicking me," Laurent said irritably, as the woman rushed forwards. 

"Now what?" Eug√©nie cried, upset at Nicolas' bewilderment and pained terror. 

The door slammed and Felix came striding back in, looking concerned. 

"I heard a scream--"

"Mmnoh!" Nicolas shrieked, getting worse. He was utterly lost. 

"Oh," Felix said. He carefully picked his way around his compatriots who were trying to subdue their theatre director without harming him, and very precisely boxed Nicolas' ear, then slapped him so hard he jolted in Laurent and Eleni's grasp. He stopped struggling, going limp, and they lowered him to the floor gently and released him. He curled up into a ball, covering his head with his arms and hands, and rocked back and forth, soft sobs and moans still escaping him. 

The four vampires exchanged glances, and all but Felix looked helpless. His lips were set in a hard line as he looked down at Nicolas, but no thoughts really came to him. Just actions. 

He bent down and hoisted Nicolas up by his armpits. The violinist dangled, unresisting, the blow to the head enough to disorient him and prevent him from focusing. 

"You've...broken him," Laurent said accusingly, as they watched Nicolas' head loll to the side. 

"Nicki, please," Eleni whispered softly, her hands going up to clasp his cheeks gently. "Come back to us. We'll keep you safe."

Nicolas blinked several times, shaking his head back and forth as if he could clear it. The strength seemed to flow back into his limbs and he hopped out of Felix's golem-like grasp, and stood apart from the quartet for a moment, staring at them. A laugh erupted from him, low and bitter. Then another. He slammed his hands over his mouth but it was too late, his peals of bitter angry laughter escaping already, shaking him. His fear was breaking him down, and he bent over with the force of his mad laughter. 

Felix suddenly stepped before him and produced a red thing. It was an apple. Nicolas cut himself off, and reached for it with a wavering giggle. 

"H-how much was it?" He asked, looking up at Felix fearfully. 

"Five deniers," Felix reported gravely. Nicolas nodded, returned the apple, and sat down in silence. It was a tense while until the shaking subsided. He looked exhausted and very young. Eyelids drooping, he reached for some of the coins and spun them across the table. It was an imperfect wobble, and he gave a sigh of resignation as he laid his cheek against the tabletop. 

"You have nothing to fear from us, Nicolas, not ever again," Eleni promised him, coming up and stroking his blood-sweat damp hair. His limbs felt heavy and he tried to lift a hand. She grasped it and squeezed, producing a soft, sleepy smile on his face. Dawn was approaching. "You are precious to us."

"We are very fond of you," Laurent confessed pityingly.

Felix moved Eleni aside and scooped up Nicolas with a practiced motion by now, carrying him curled up against his broad chest. 

"We need. . .more musicians. We need more actors," Nicolas murmured sleepily as they trailed Felix down the hall to the small room where they kept Nicolas' coffin, right beside the stone tunnel where he could be guarded while they slept and where he could escape if there were trouble. "Put out the light, Lestat cher," he whispered when Eleni lit a candle to the room. 

By the time they slid him in his coffin, he was in the death sleep, looking like a calm finely made young man freshly entering his twenties.

"Why did you strike him so hard?" Laurent asked. 

"We had a few lunatics in our care at the monastery, before I went to fight the wars," Felix said. "Sometimes violence is all that shakes them out of a fit, because it reminds them of a world outside themselves."

"He won't love you for it," Eugenie warned. "He won't forgive you if this continues and it is the only way we can find."

"I don't need him to love me," Felix said heavily. "Even if I were not already fond of him, I would still do it. We need him. But I am not Armand. I will only do what is necessary to bring Nicolas back to us. I do not think there is any control for him."

"He must heal," Eleni said hopefully. "It will fade into a memory, what we did."

"He is right. He needs distracting presence," Laurent said. "We need other actors, other musicians, for him to focus his attentions on. Without them, we will not flourish, and Nicolas will have no one but his former tormentors."

"They will ground him in the present," Eleni agreed. "I will ask Armand what we can do."

 

But when Eleni put the question to him, Armand was unmoved and expressionless.

"Are our performances not enough of an advertisement to our kind?" he asked. Not even an eyebrow did he raise as he sat at the desk of what had been Renaud's office. They shared the enormous wooden surface, facing each other as they learned how to handle the accounts, how to write letters and negotiate for things, and apply for permits.

"We must do something for Nicolas. Or his memories of Les Innocents will devour him," Eleni said, guilt writ plainly on her face.

"Do you trust him with mortal performers? We need a larger orchestra as it is. They need not be vampires. I have been thinking on the problem of constructing the illusion of a theatre full of mortals pretending to be vampires," Armand said.

"You would permit mortals under our roof? To observe us for long periods of time?" Eleni asked with a gasp.

"If you trust that fledgling with them, yes. We can write to the newspapers and post advertisements for only the best. At the very least, the auditions will distract him," Armand said, turning back to the accounts books. With pen quill in hand, he looked like a schoolboy at his reader.

"I shall start on it tonight!" Eleni said, unable to mask her delight. They could grow, and Nicolas' creativity could blossom if they had more actors and stagehands and musicians. He would flower and thrive and put all that darkness behind him. Surely that was all it was.

Nicolas had been delighted with the idea, and had thrown himself into compositions of greater complexity at once. Whereas Eug‚Äö√†√∂¬¨¬©nie and Felix and Laurent reveled in this new age, exploring the night markets, crushing against mortals in crowded coffee houses, dancing the new dances at parties, and gawking at other performances, Nicolas was constantly at work, his mind churning out an endless stream of music. Armand began to sit with him, watching him silently like a cat while heedless of his presence, Nicolas muttered to himself in a musical frenzy, writing and playing from dusk to dawn, sometimes forgetting to feed until Eleni reminded him, shoving him out the door over his protests. She was perturbed by Armand's attendance, for he did not seem to show much interest in anything else of the theatre. But Nicolas never spoke of it and she thought to leave it alone.

Now he stood in a white shirt and simple brown breeches with white silk stockings, his brown shoes shined well, looking down at the list of hopefuls he held in his hand. The theatre was gaining a small following, not least among musicians, and it had not been difficult to solicit good musicians and even talented ones. Whether Nicolas could work with them was another matter, and when yet another mortal left sobbing and yet smiling, Felix asked whether Eleni would sit in on the auditions.

So tonight she took some letters and bills that needed attention and sat in the audience with the other waiting mortals, just in case. Nicolas stood on the side in the conductor's place, while the very first unfortunate stood on stage to perform for all in the hall.

"Madeleine Leclerc?" Nicolas asked. The fair-haired young woman on stage nodded, biting her lip and releasing it as if remembering not to do so. She looked at someone in the audience and Eleni realized she was accompanied by an anxious mustachioed gentleman who waited in the audience and gave her an encouraging nod. A husband? An uncle or father?

"If you would begin. The piece you selected, and then I shall give you some sight-reading, and perhaps we can have a basso continuo," Nicolas said, all business, almost sounding bored, but Eleni could see the intense attention he focused on the woman.

She played something by Bach that Eleni thought she might have heard before, as close to perfect as a mortal could have managed, a human sound inevitable in the touch of the strings. But such a tenderness of expression!

Nicolas was silent, arms folded, expressionless as he looked up at her. Then wordlessly he handed her the sheet of music he had prepared. She took it with a curtesy, and with shaking hands placed it on the music stand. Her eyes widened, then she frowned and narrowed her eyes as if puzzled.

"M'sieur, I--"

"Can you not read it? Do you need more light?" Nicolas' tone was sharp.

"No, I, I understand, it's just, I have never seen--"

"Of course you haven't, I wrote it. Now play!" He demanded petulantly.

She set her jaw in determination, and managed a passable lilt of notes. She stayed steady, a wise move, for the brief composition was complex, requiring many jumps and unconventional bowing, and she took her time. She fumbled a measure, trying to recover with a charming trill, but Eleni could still feel the vivacity that so characterized much of Nicki's music.

Nicolas shook his head and put his hand out for the sheet, but the woman hesitated.

She looked older than Nicolas, could have been an older sister, but her voice was girlish when she asked, "Could I, could I try again? Or, or keep it? It is so beautiful."

Something must have crossed Nicolas' face that Eleni couldn't see from where she sat, because the woman gasped and shoved the paper back at Nicolas immediately.

"Were you raised on a farm? I didn't know a violin could produce the sounds of a mule braying unevenly to an unkind stablemate," Nicolas said scathingly, making Eleni cover her mouth. "You choose a pedestrian piece and invest it with nothing but softness when it invites flourish, you pollute the air with shrieks I barely recognize as my own music--"

"How dare you!" The man in the audience shouted, standing up. He looked about to pull out his sword, when the woman cried out, "No, Martin!"

"You want to play for this charlatan? This boy?" He demanded. She turned bright red, for all eyes in the audience were on her, and nodded.

"But if, if M'sieur, if Maestro is displeased with my performance," she ventured.

"Madame Leclerc, what gave you that impression?" Nicolas asked sarcastically. "More solidity when changing your string. You're too flighty."

"Merci, M'sieur," she said, already disappointed, and her husband huffed, "enough of this abuse! Madeleine, come away, I won't allow him to speak to you like this! Calling him Maestro when he's no older than Lucas!"

"I failed already, Martin, we can go home now," she said softly as she stepped off the stage.

"Stop!" Nicolas commanded, making her freeze in her steps. "I never said you had failed." His expression was unreadable and the couple--and everyone else--stared at him. "Go take a seat. You're in the first round."

"Oh M'sieur! Oh thank you!" She cried, and nearly ran to where he pointed.

"But he insulted your playing! He hates it! You, who attended the finest classes, who played for the bishop!" Her husband hissed, and she dragged him down and shushed him.

"He's an artist! He demands perfection!" She whispered.

Eleni was bewildered, and she could only shrug at the questioning nervous glances the other candidates gave her.

"Next. Maurice Tournee," said Nicolas, ignoring the whispers.

"M'sieur, your piece, mine, then perhaps a pas de deux," Nicolas said brusquely without any introduction.

The man played mechanically perfectly. The professionalism and finesse with which he carried his bow and the confidence of his stance marked him as a career musician. 

"Now this," Nicolas said, handing him a different sheet of music.

The man looked at it, goggle-eyed, and flushed. 

"Well?" Nicolas asked, sounding bored.

"I can't play this! No one can!" The man said. "It's physically impossible. What kind of test is this?"

"Are you withdrawing?" Nicolas asked.

"M'sieur, this, I know you have composed it, but no musician alive can perform it!" The man shook it at him desperately. "It would be madness to attempt!"

Before anyone could blink Nicolas had whipped his violin off its stand and launched into what was apparently the piece in the man's hand, for the mortal looked down at it and back at him in awe and disbelief. Eleni soon saw why the man could not play it. No mortal could have. The speed and succession of notes that shot out from his bow tugged at her navel and made her feel like she was falling and being caught again, tumbling down stairs and transporting to a new plane. She stifled a moan of pleasure, resisting the urge to rise and dance, and she saw the mortals at her side grip the edges of their seats.

It lasted only five minutes, but by the end of it the man was weeping openly and shaking his head as he read along. He had been shaken to his core.

"You could have tried," was all Nicolas said, very softly. Their eyes met, and he shook his head slowly. The man seemed almost relieved, suddenly sagging and shakily making his way off the stage. The hall was silent as he walked the long walk to the back, the door closing hollowly behind him.

Nicolas wiped his face clear with a red handkerchief someone had thoughtfully provided to hide any blood sweat, shoved it in his sleeve, and looked back at his list.

"Jacques Gretain?" He called, merciless.

"Bon soir, M'sieur de Lenfent," said a slightly older gentleman, who gave a brief bow.

"Bon soir," Nicolas nodded.

"Do you not recall who I am?" The man asked, mirth playing around his lips.

"Does it matter?"

"I helped you acquire your first violin, M'sieur," the man told him reproachfully. "You were but a student of law at the Sorbonne, so young. I see my investment was not misplaced. Your playing just now is as fine as the Stradivarius you bear. Surely you did not forget that first instrument?"

Eleni loathed the oily insinuation, and was distressed by the welcoming smile on Nicki's face. She had not thought such a ploy might work, that he could play favorites. She had thought better of him.

"Of course, M'sieur Gretain! How could I be so remiss as to forget?" Nicolas said warmly, friendliness radiating from him. The audience was glaring daggers at the candidate, who smiled knowingly. "Ah, it would be quite something to hear you play. What brings you to me?"

"Times have been difficult of late, and alas, I am afraid my theatre contacts have their own necks to worry about. I thought I would come to your little theatre, which has gained quite the reputation, and see if you still remembered your old mentor," the man said with another smile that did not reach his eyes.

"Of course, of course, how remiss of me! Please, do play," Nicolas said earnestly. Eleni covered her face and stifled a groan of disappointment.

The playing was actually quite good. The man was a professional, certainly, and more practiced than even the other two. But he was lazy, no doubt trusting on his past with Nicolas. When Nicolas handed him the composition, he tutted indulgently, and picked his way through what would have been a challenging piece had he not decided to ignore half the notes and add his own showy flourishes, vibratos, and unnecessary trills.

"Well, M'sieur?" He was the first to speak.

"My father smashed that violin against my face," Nicolas said quietly.

"Pardon?" The man asked, startled and confused. This had nothing to do with the easy conversation he had been expecting.

"Your playing is technically boring with the same repetitiveness of a two-sou whore trying for as many thrusts against the wall as she can get in one night," Nicolas told the man enthusiastically, to the gasps of the audience, though Eleni saw several of them cover their mouths to hide their gleeful smiles at this turn of events. 

"What?" The man had gone pale.

"It is outshone by the sheer laziness with which you lick and lurch your way across the strings, as if the music were a dead horse to be beaten, and I would hate to be your wife if that is how you treat musical expression. Is she still fucking that lyc‚Äö√†√∂¬¨¬©e student of yours or has she settled for the servant girl she told me about?" Nicolas said thoughtfully.

"You! You insolent!" The man was shaking in rage, now turning purple as he pointed a bow at him.

"You are an insult to music," Nicolas said lightly, as if commenting on the weather, "and I forgot you because you ignored me as soon as you had my money in your hand. Next time come because you actually want to perform here with us, not because no one else would take you. Now get out of my theatre."

"Your theat--I won't forget this, boy!" The man shouted, but the audience was booing and hissing at him, jeering at him as he stumbled out of the theatre. A cheer rose when the door slammed shut after. Pride surged in Eleni and she looked back at Nicolas with a grin, only to find his expression unreadable. There was no triumph here for him.

Nicolas looked down at the list for a long time without saying anything, and he was clearly not reading. Then he looked up and said blithely, "Sylvain Defleur?"

So it went, Nicolas excoriating each candidate with colorful insults whilst somehow providing constructive criticism in the same breath. It did not matter if he liked the musician or if the candidate made it to the second round. He treated them all the same, that was apparent, and soon the ones on the rest of the list were steeling themselves for the onslaught as soon as they put down the bow.

By the time they had passed through the four who had made it through the second round out of twenty and reduced it to Pierre Sepelier and Josephine Trudeau, Eleni had learned several new curse words of the age. She joined Nicolas where he sat at the harpsichord, reviewing the seating chart and revising his lists. He was muttering under his breath, a low continuous sound bereft of syllables. He ignored her when she swept his hair out of his eyes and combed it gently, grooming him.

"What is a squid? You called the redhead that," Eleni asked, after a while.

Nicolas looked up but stared ahead. "Hmm? Oh, it's a sea creature. Sucks on things. I think." He shrugged and bowed his head again over his work.

She studied him, his young face, his intent look, that stubbornness, and yet the exuberant childlike quality of his lips as they moved. She had never known motherhood as a mortal, but she supposed it felt a little like what she was beginning to feel for Nicolas. She wanted this to be good for him. And yet, sometimes he said things that made her wonder at the scarred thing that was his mind.

"Nicki," she began hesitantly. "Did your father really smash your violin against your face?"

"Mmm," Nicolas murmured, noncommittal, and made some more notations.

"Nicki."

"Hmm? Oh, yes. He did." 

"How could he? Why did he do that? Were you injured badly?"

Nicolas shifted, turning around to face her, but he was looking at her blankly, as if he did not understand the point of her question.

"He was my father. I had disobeyed him, sold my textbooks to buy the violin, played until I failed my classes. I had not become the favored son he wanted," he said patiently with a shrug. "I had to stay inside for a week while my face healed, so no one would know. He didn't want anyone to find out. It would shame the family, do you see?" He didn’t say that he picked out the splinters in his cheek and mouth, wincing spitefully and wearing the wounds with pride as he was confined to his room. It had been a dark few days of nothing but enforced prayer and his young self had thought it knew what madness was, alone in his room with nothing but a well of despair opening up beneath him for the future.

"That was, that was cruel. And brutal," she added. Again, that uncomprehending stare, the careless shrug. He turned back to his work, but he rubbed his face as if in memory, in a strangely careful and brittle movement.

She frowned, struggling to understand him. She left him to it, gathering her things. What manner of childhood had he had? What sense of self in the young man had already been twisted before Les Innocents ever got to him?

Gently, she brushed against the edges of his mind, only to gasp and retreat at once. It was like touching tendrils of darkness, an inky whirlpool that funneled and consumed itself, shutting everything else out. To try to delve it was to lose oneself. Nicolas was unreadable, an unassailable island.

"How many more do we need?" She asked softly.

"Two more and an understudy," Nicolas mumbled, making notes for himself. She had been surprised by the sensible, tidy handwriting. "Then we start on the actors and rehearsal."

"The scrims and props are coming along nicely, and Felix takes to costume-making strangely well," Eleni reported.

"He had to mend his own tunics in the war and stitch wounds," Nicolas said distractedly.

"Oh? Did he tell you that?"

Nicolas looked up at her, surprised at the question. "I don't know," he finally admitted. "He must have. I think it's true."

Eleni considered the possibility he might not be in complete command of his powers, that the thoughts of others bled into his own. A fledgling could become easily confused, forget who he was, his own memories. Or worse, drive someone else mad.

She leaned down and gave him a cool, dry kiss on the forehead. His skin was cold and clammy from blood sweat. He paid her no attention, that steady murmur returning under his breath.

"When was the last time you fed?" she asked in concern. 

"I don't know, yesterday, earlier tonight?" Nicolas mumbled with a shrug of his shoulders, not pausing in his writing.

"Fledglings need to feed every night," Eleni said, trying not to sound like she was chiding him. 

Nicolas made a distracted grumbling noise, as if any sound coming from him was sufficient response. He pulled a sheet to him and began drafting a letter. They still relied upon him for the most important formal correspondence. The language of the age, it was one thing to know the vocabulary and the sound, to mimic the cadences of speech and to parrot what they had heard in the coffeehouses. It was another to sound like an authentic member of this age, especially on paper, when the delivery was delayed and none of them could mentally deceive their recipients. 

So much relied upon Nicolas. And he was still young, he looked so young, he was too young to be managing an entire theatre. Eleni and Armand must take up the task when he faltered, force any new members to overlook the director's...idiosyncrasies.

"I thought you relished the hunt," Eleni said, trying to broach the topic once more. It would do no good to goad or nag him, not when they were uncertain whether he was the sort to stop work to get his way. Eleni didn't think so. Not from the way Nicolas practically bled ink onto the pages. 

"Mmph," Nicolas replied with another noncommittal grunt.

"Niko--"

"If you tell me a story I will go out and feed," Nicolas told her in flawless Ancient Greek, jarring her and bringing the smell of olive trees to her mind. 

"What story do you--" she began, and too late she realized she had responded in kind, the Greek unearthed from her childhood. 

"I knew it!" He shouted, leaping up, all work abandoned as he shook a finger at her, bouncing on his heels excitedly. "I guessed! Now you must tell me your story! You must! You must!"

"Calm down, you're like an excited jackdaw," Eleni said, laughing at his childlike delight, trying to grab his shoulders, but he took her elbows and shook them with glee at being correct, all energy and attention focused on her. Had his inattentiveness and boredom been a ruse? Had he been watchful when he was inattentive and distracted when he seemed focused?

"No, no, I won, I won, I--" 

"M. de Lenfent," Armand's voice stopped him cold, sapped his expression of its glee as his defenses shifted back up. Eleni thought she could almost feel a reduction in the mental noise around her, but she couldn't be entirely sure. Her brain still felt like it was rattling around in its skull from Nicolas' jarring. 

"Oui, M'sieur?" Nicolas turned, back straight, voice even, suddenly looking and sounding like any sober student. The fear of Armand still kept him in line, and for the most part he gave a deceptively good performance as a sane, polite, and attentive employee. 

After their journey to Nicki's old flat, they had little to do with one another, and if anything, rather than reconciling them as Eleni had hoped, they were stiffer and more formal with each other than ever. Nicolas never sought the coven master out, and if he was at all aware of Armand's nearly constant attendance during his frenzied evenings composing and writing, he gave no sign of it. 

He was at work, was left alone to work, and that was all that mattered. When he went out he was not disturbed and when he returned to his house or to his booksellers for more clothes or books, no one thought to follow him or stop him. They were all wrapped up in learning this new world.

"Are we to expect fully staffed rehearsals soon?" Armand asked politely.

"Another night and the orchestra can begin," Nicolas replied, voice alert and clear. "The actors, they will take some time. They need to be able to work with us, to ignore our unusual ways, and to take direction from the music."

"Will those candidates be seen fleeing from the premises in tears as well?" Armand asked lightly, and Eleni saw the muscles in Nicki's jaw clench.

"There have been some appalling candidates, Armand, who are better off not wasting our time," she said, trying to placate Nicki. "We want talent and skill of the most exquisite. Anything less would heighten the mortals' alarm at our perfection."

"Very well. Carry on." Armand gave a single nod. He knew what she was trying to do, surely? To her relief, he left with nothing more than a "bon soir."

Beside her, Nicolas rubbed his temples and then his face tiredly. This time, she was certain she felt the ambient mental noise come back up. Did Nicolas shield himself at all? It was so hard to tell, when it was impossible to distinguish thoughts from the maelstrom of his mind.

"He is only looking after all of us," Eleni said gently, putting a hand on his arm.

He stared down at it until she removed it, and looked up at her with a tired smile. 

"He looks after us, what he thinks is the theatre. It is you who looks after all of us," he told her not unkindly. He slipped the sheaf of papers underneath the nearby candlelabra and stood, pulling out the pocket watch she was surprised to find in his waistcoat, not a usual accessory for him. Too much to keep track of, as he often said, when they pointed out the state of his clothing, his hair, his kills. It was less choice and more absence of choice that led him to these failings during his inattentiveness. Few bloodthirsty fledglings left blood streaked across their face or their clothes the way he did, after a frenzy or when caught by an idea right after a hunt.

"I'll be back," he said. "There are some books I need to get for tomorrow's auditions."

"Will you hunt while you are out?" Eleni asked. "For me?"

"For you?" Nicolas asked, puzzled, then gave a resigned smile. "Very well."

"Thank you," Eleni said, fingers lingering on his shoulder as he turned to leave.

Nicolas stalked the streets rapidly, the melody that had captured him all night had broken through at Armand's interruption, and it would not let him rest now. He had to get back to the theatre. It would be, hah, safe there, with his jailers to look after him like the child they thought he was, those old ones who had seen years and yet stumbled after him to gawk at other performers, night markets, coffee houses, all the pleasures of the world that they had denied themselves. 

The dismay on Eleni's face had been unsettling when she realized she had missed so much of life and the world, shutting herself in Les Innocents. It reminded him of when he'd first come to Paris. Here was where he thought he could come into his own, but the only road it offered in the end was the same dark and lonely road Nicolas had always trudged along, hoping for a passerby or journeying companion. If she asked him, he would have accompanied her anywhere.

So when she asked that he take them all to crowd into the coffeehouses and attend the salons and shows, he had no problem obliging, braving even the places he formerly shunned, the places of his former mortal life. He let her sit him down in a chair, when his nerves were too unsettled, and run a comb through his hair and into his scalp with soothing strokes. He picked out clothing that she liked, that she thought respectable. A green frock coat here, a good size black silk ribbon in his hair. Polished shoes again, and tight silk stockings on supple calves beneath breeches that she primly buttoned for him when he forgot. Dim soft memories of a nurse doing the same for him as a child. For all purposes Eleni was starting to treat Nicolas like her own, even as he taught her and the others the arcane rules of deportment and attire. 

Laurent was quick to be jealous of those who did not sport culottes, and now sported long trousers almost every evening. It amused Nicolas to no end to know that an aristocrat was so enamored of much of what had become emblematic of the politics that would have driven him out of his lands. He spent more time down by the docks and the railroads talking to people, but always came back, asking Nicolas what to do about this question or that question, and what did it mean when the men there asked this? Sometimes Nicolas himself did not know the answers. It was a different world, and he had to confess his bourgeois ignorance of some of the matters of the working classes. Laurent went away with a thoughtful expression, at that.

But Eleni loved it when Nicki wore breeches, and so he kept it, though he seldom changed his clothes unless she asked, or he thought she would ask. With her help, with his hair slicked back, his cuffs immaculate, his face clean, his cravat nicely tied and neat against his throat, he looked like the young gentleman he was supposed to be. The university student he could have been, had it not been for that one fatal concert, perhaps, that drove him to the violin. He stalked through the salons with her, delighting in demonstrating his wit and modern speech, his gestures and expressions animated with the quirk of the corner of his mouth and the sly raise of his eyebrows, his eyes large with wonder and exaggeration as he spoke. They walked through the gardens and he showed her what she had missed, the philosophy and thought they had unearthed and renewed, and preened when she praised the things he praised with her own original thoughts.

Armand never went on these exploratory outings. No one knew what he did with his time when he was not in Renaud's office, now Armand's office and private rooms, for of course the little shit had to be entitled to his own counsel. But the less to do with Armand, the better. The others were watchful enough for Nicki's taste, asking after him, where had he fed, how had he hid the body, endless questions every night for the inexperienced fledgling child among them.

Truthfully, Nicolas could hardly blame Felixfor nagging him so closely. They did fear for Nicolas' safety, and his habit of working until he dropped to the floor did nothing to dissuade them from making sure he was at the theatre by dawn, where they could guarantee he would be carried to his coffin.

He kicked a stone in disgust. If he were honest with himself he might admit he appreciated the comforting safety of Felix's strong arms beneath his knees and armpits, his grip secure and close as he curled Nicki up against his chest and carried him to his coffin. But that would be too much like needing anyone, and he had eschewed that the moment he cast off Lestat. He couldn't find who he was, the new Nicolas, with Lestat there, disgusted and horrified that Nicolas Rescued was not Nicolas the mortal, the gentleman he'd known in Auvergne, the lover and the friend. For all of Lestat's delusions of grandeur and pathetic vulnerability to the empiricist and fleeting indulgences of his new existence, he had still refused to release what he no longer was and never had been. An ordinary mortal man. Lestat had never taken responsibility either, for abandoning Nicki to the darkness. All their gasped and whispered and solemn promises, and all that Nicki had done to tried to hide his own darkness from one of the few people he truly loved in his life, to what end? Thrown in his face. An appointment with a fawning tailor, as if to give him hope they might at least meet in secret. (The only reason Nicki had gone at all.) Porcelain plates and gilded forks, as if to give him hope of dining together. But then came the stupid trinkets, the rings, the paintings, the random pretty things, and Nicolas knew. Perhaps he shouldn't have lied to himself, stewed in anger, told himself there was still a chance of remonstrance and reconciliation if only they could meet, fight it out like the country villagers they secretly were. He ought to have given up right there. The knife was in his hand often enough, why did he always drop it in the end?

He stopped suddenly, realizing he'd been walking without minding where he was going, hands shoved in his pockets while he stared at the cobbles and brooded.

The side street was deserted, the streets leading off of it a warren of alleys. How had he gotten here? He didn't recognize this place, no landmarks, no familiar smells. He turned, hearing the giggle of a child and the humming of a woman.

"Bon soir?" he called curiously, but his voice echoed down the lane. He walked faster now, but the sounds seemed to chase him, and the cobbles looked like giant boulders, the tiny grains packed together over the eons until they were hard and unbreakable against the packed dirt of the Parisian streets. He blinked, the curb and the light from the house windows around him bright and gleaming, full of color, screaming at him and reaching for him with wispy prismatic tendrils. He had not thought the dazzling light could hold so many colors. They flicked and burned against his skin and he winced with every step and every new sight. The sounds were rising, thoughts now, people talking and singing and thinking and shouting and fucking and sleeping and he couldn't find his way. Everything was too bright and too loud and heavy, yes, it was all too heavy. 

He gasped, tugging his cravat loose and flinging the collar of his shirt open. The air was oppressive. He couldn't shove it in his lungs fast enough and now the very particles of oxygen were fighting against his chest. He was dead, if he was dead why did he still need to breathe? It was too much. Too many...and he was lost, for the first time since he was a student, he was lost in Paris and the sounds and thoughts and light and sights...he staggered against a wall, the stones painfully rough beneath his fingertips as he grasped the bricks for support, panting. He stared at the stones inches from his eyes and picked out the granules. They hurt his eyes, grazed his vision with their roughness, as if he could scrape against them just by looking. And then susurration came. She was supposed to visit tonight, but he would surely pay them tomorrow, if only they could get that job with Mlle. Citropeau, then will Papa sing me a story, you stupid bitch, get back here! Nicolas squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, but it was no use. The patterns in the bricks were there and he leapt backwards as the wall lunged at him, faces in the stones laughing and leering and fanging at him. The susurration rose like a vise around his head, and the tendrils of his hair felt like wire-thin knives cutting into his skin as he brought his hands up to his ears. He couldn't breathe! He had to get out, he had to find a main road or, or something.

"M'sieur? M'sieur are you unwell?" The voice was loud, or was it soft? It seemed to echo through the lane and into Nicki's ears and his head snapped up, spotting a matronly woman and her husband, looking at him with concern. They were a few feet away, but he could see every line of their face, the moistness of their eyes, the wispiness of their hair, dear god, they were like melting bags of flesh, roiling before him. The nausea washed over him, thick and heavy, and he felt his knees weaken.

He staggered sideways again, and leaned his feverish forehead against the wall, breathing hard. They were full of blood. The smell was hitting him now, and his hunger spiked.

"Gina, what if he is contagious?"

"Nonsense. Look at the books in his hand. He is just a student, probably sick or drunk. Poor thing."

"What if he's a thief?"

"He's dressed too well to be a thief. Stop your worrying."

"God have mercy," Nicolas groaned, his voice loud and roaring in his ears. Why couldn't they leave? Their booming voices were a relief to pick out from the din crushing his head, but they were enormous, jarring and shattering him. He closed his eyes as their footsteps approached, their shoes grinding against the stone and grit and dirt, and he could hear the death rattle of the cow before it was slaughtered and its skin dried and boiled for the leather that creaked and flowed around silk stockinged feet!

"Why, he's just a boy! Our Jeanette would have been twenty this year, if she'd lived."

"Should we send for a doctor?"

They were whispering, surely, but how could whispers be so loud, such hissing and howling of wind through the lips and on the tongue? Every word was pulling at him, tugging him away from the stones that screamed and the rooms that burned him with their light. He had to get away, this had been a mistake! He had to get back.

"M'sieur? Young man?"

"Are you lost, dear? Oh pet, oh dear, you're so pale." A whimper escaped Nicolas as a burning hot hand slimed against his cheek, and his legs gave out from under him, his over sensitivity making him whimper in pain as he slid against the wall down to his knees.

"Careful, catch him!"

"Well, he doesn't smell drunk."

"It's too much," Nicolas half groaned, half whispered.

"What was that? Speak up, eh?"

"I need..." Nicolas began, reaching out blindly with his hand. Everything hurt. The air on his skin, the very muscles shifting against each other in his throat.

"Tell me what you need, dear. Tell mother what you need." Someone took his hand and his eyes snapped open. Her face was right there, so close, skin creased like paper and forested with invisible follicles of white grass that reached up for him, and he looked beyond to see her husband's kindly but concerned expression. It suddenly melted into an odd blankness, as did hers, and without thinking or questioning it he pulled her into his arms and sank his fangs into the delicate skin of her neck with a little cry of pain, as if he were the one being fed upon. No screams, no interruption. The noises were dying down. He gasped for air, surfacing, and reached for the other one, who for some reason was standing there, glassy-eyed with no regard for his wife's corpse cooling rapidly at his feet. Nicolas brought this one close as well, not one to refuse mysterious providence, and sighed with relief as the noises calmed and the wind stopped screaming against his skin. He left them slumped against one another, pocketing their coin purses and slicing their necks with his sharp vampire nails.

Why, he was just a little ways from his house across the quai. He hadn't gone far at all! But now he was out and he could feel the sluggishness in his limbs, and he patted his pocket with the books he wanted and headed for the Boulevard du Temple, where before he had even reached the theatre door Felixgrabbed him off the street and pulled him inside, cursing his tardiness for making them all worry.

 

It would do him no good to tell anyone about last night's unusual events. Perhaps they had it from time to time. A price to be paid for the Dark Gifts? But why had they not screamed? Was it some dark god or goddess, offering Nicolas succor in the forms of those gentle lambs for the slaughter?

There was little time to think of it, for the first vampire to knock on their doors had done so tonight. Arthur Montrose, a blond-haired blue-eyed Adonis from London. He was debonair and charming and beautiful, and reminded Nicolas so much of Lestat that he found himself edging away from him without intending to. It was most distracting to have him sitting in the audience, waiting his turn to audition as an actor, an actor of all things! If he didn't know better, he'd swear Armand had invited him just to spite Nicolas.

Arthur had been a minstrel as a mortal, and a tumbler. As a vampire he was a foppish rake, so there the resemblance to Lestat ended. His was an indulgent indulgence, no bravado or intensity. As enchanted as Lestat was by the luxuries and decadence Paris offered the poor country boy inside his soul, he was still an aristocrat by breeding. He had grown up in a castle on a hill, drafty though it was. 

"Enchante, M'sieur," Arthur had said at their first meeting, in the lingua franca of the era. He was dressed in a violet brocade embroidered frock coat, a pale canary yellow shirt, and lime green striped breeches. He reminded Nicki of a peacock.

"Bienvenue," Nicolas said politely without returning his smile.

"And this is Felix. He does many of our costumes and also sometimes ushers," Eleni continued.

Felixnodded and said, "Enchante." Arthur returned the gesture. Two blond gods nodding at each other. Nicolas felt the giggle bubble up, and he covered his mouth as discreetly as he could, as if to wipe it.

Eleni and Laurent had coached him exhaustively on this. If a vampire ever came, it would not do for them to know about Nicolas' particular vulnerabilities as the fledgling of the group and as the playwright and composer, no less. Over and over, they reminded him that he would not have been allowed to live if he had been made under the Les Innocents coven, and the same would be true for many other covens still. If a candidate proved unsuitable and left, the rumors and gossip he or she might spread could endanger them all and invite covens of vampires to exterminate their small group in Paris.

If Nicolas felt the laughing fit come on, he would cover his mouth or excuse himself. If he was beyond that, Eugenie, as the next youngest, would take up the laugh as if sharing a secret joke. If it looked to be a full blown attack, Felix would create an excuse to leave with Nicolas. Nicolas had to trust in them, to do what was necessary for their survival, and to trust they would not harm him. Not again. Never again.

"And this is Laurent," Eleni said. "He assists me in operating the theatre, in accounts, orders, inventory, all those little details we need for an interface with the mortal world."

"Yes, you've done quite well!" Arthur said admiringly, shaking Laurent's hand. "You see, the mortal company that was once here has been spreading word of M. de Lenfent's theatre. But the general talk among the Children of the Night, so to speak, is that it was taken over by vampires. I see that these rumors have not been misleading."

"You spoke to Renaud's people?" Nicolas asked in excitement. 

"Yes, they're doing well," Arthur drawled. "Did you know them?" So Renaud did not speak of Nicolas. They kept quiet about his "loss of reason," as Roget had written, that wretch. Lucinda, Jeanette, Sebastien, all of them, gone on living.

Suddenly the world was too big. The theatre was a cavernous tomb that loomed and stretched out wards before him, the ceiling miles underground. He took a step back, and Eleni must have seen his stricken expression, because she looked like the small girl in Attica whose brother needed looking after, and he had known men like that before he went off to fight in the Crusades, the sun streaming through the trees and making patterns on the knights' clothing as he sat by the fire, mending and casting off strips to use for binding wounds like those on Brother Dulot last night who had visions from God, for Felix was never one to waste, not even when papa was hurting her and Eugenie did not want to that night, she was tired, but she had to be good, because if he was good he could be a member of the Musketeers, never mind that mama said it was not a fit lifestyle for a nobleman, because when Laurent grew up he would be a count and he would know all the girls he ever wanted and maybe one or two boys too, and he would pledge his chastity to The Lord until he could attain that honored place with purpose and direction and command like he did at home but for now the horrors of Les Innocents were there but not there, the screams rising in his ears and his lips and in his head.

Nicolas put his hands out and staggered backwards, the ground heavy and dense beneath his shoes, his feet in their stockings in their leather, like cows skinned and tanned and left to eat his limbs alive. They were going to come for him and the wood would not be enough, flowering and growing cobwebs of thorns and vines and he didn't want to hurt them, why couldn't they just listen, just understand, why did they look down in alarm at the thorns they thought were there and weren't there, and stare with horror at him from those dead glassy moist eyes, each holding a perfect round jewel filled with blood and nerves and fluids, so wet he could hear them rolling in their sockets, rolling on the cobbles on the streets with the rattle from the wheels made by the carpenters of Faucherny from trees they selected and bent and twisted by this whole structure of stone and wood and velvet and dust and ash and air and he couldn't get out, this would be his tomb and had already been his tomb and he was falling, the wood splintering up and the knots snatching at his hands and he couldn't stop it, couldn't shut it out, it just kept coming and coming, the smell of travel and horse, creaking across the ocean with the sea in hope of something more than the endless stretch of days. Those blue eyes and the puzzled look and Nicolas couldn't bear it, why did they lay their claws on him, the skin on their hands paper silk and the bones beneath them so hard. It was like in the alley but so much worse, now he could hear everything, down to the shouts of his friend Henri when the duelist cut Laurent down and the cries Eugenie made when she was first taken and the smell of rain and the feel of the ringing in his ears and the sound of clouds roiling outside the theatre, the pulsing of the rats beneath the catacombs, little parcels of blood scurrying and waiting and festering with pestilence so like the imitation dolls around him who wouldn't let him go, who wouldn't stop taking and taking and who didn't listen! 

He wanted them to listen, he wanted them to know! But their fangs would come and he knew they'd come, the crypt dirt he could hear and the cloying bitterness he could smell and the screams he could taste loud in his eyes and everywhere, those fangs stabbing him through, cold faced demons with dangerous glittering intelligent eyes peering out from a mannequin's body, interchangeable with any and timeless as they grasped at the fleeting fibers and weave of Nicki's blue frock coat and the gold trim on his lapels and he couldn't get away, his breath coming in short pants as he tried to push and shove and kick against these immovable forces which ricocheted off him and came back for a different part of him, snatching at his joints and limbs like greedy squid reaching the end of a long hunt and now determined to keep its prey for as long as it could to feed from and fatten.

He screamed. Then his love came, the blond hair and the blue eyes and the aquiline nose and the roguish smile.

"You changed your face!" Nicolas gasped hoarsely, his struggles unfazed by the monsters grasping his limbs and clawing at his clothing. 

"Yes? What?" His love said as Nicolas shook his head. "What's he talking about? What's wrong with him?"

"He thinks you're--" one of the monsters said, and Nicolas screamed as he tried to lash out while it was distracted, to duck from under its grasp. He was too slow. 

"Talk him down! Tell him he's going to--look, just calm him!" Another monster said, and Nicolas recognized the voice, could hear the exasperation from the numbers in the accounting books down the hall calling to him. Dead trees and pulp waiting. Dead, dead, forever, rotting smells clinging and reaching for him in a dark barren womb that made no sense and had no end, where he sank into darkness and emerged into darkness with nothing but pain to guide him.

"Should we go get--"

"No. Not yet."

"Is this a bloody test? Some kind of joke?" The blond took a step back hesitantly. 

"You have to get out of here!" Nicolas shrieked at him desperately, and Felixtied his mouth with the war wounds and it was like that time in the monastery when they brought in Brother Cherloupin, just a child then, already suffering from the fits God bestowed upon those who heard his Voice and saw his Vision, and Nicolas understood he was to bite down on it like the child had and Felixnodded but frowned, looking puzzled, and Nicolas' breath seethed through the teeth and his cloth and he couldn't stop it, couldn't stop any of it, because Felixwas turning back into the monster and he just wanted his guardian back, his bodyguard, his theatre usher, his friend and golem. 

"Calm down. You're safe. You're all right," his love said and Nicolas shook his head fervently, the tears spilling from his cheeks at the pain that coursed through him. Why had he left? Why had he hurt him so, abandoned him, cursed him? And then expected Nicolas to thank him for it, to celebrate the death of them?

"There is no one here to harm you," his love continued, but he looked in alarm at something beyond Nicki's vision, and the silence descended until there was nothing but the sounds of cloth shifting and shoving as they grappled with Nicki's struggling arms and legs, trying to pin him to the floor where he had fallen. The wood was just wood. The tomb was just the theatre. Everything was shrinking. 

"Why did you leave? Why couldn't you stay and at least try to understand?" Nicolas tried to ask, but the cloth in his mouth gagged him and his anger and fear dissolved into desperate sorrow and pain, his heart and lungs stuffed with cotton as he struggled to breathe. The monsters let him go and he curled into a ball, hands over his head as he sobbed and gave empty heaves, shaking and rocking back and forth. It would never be better, would it?

"I don't understand," Arthur whispered as Nicki's fit died down. "What's the matter with him?" Did he make Arthur see those thorns? Was Arthur the only one?

"Those blessed with genius are often blessed with madness as well," said an angel-faced teenage boy with russet hair, dressed all in black with no ornamentation save for the fine white lace at his cuffs and collar, which only served to draw out the startling beauty of his stillness. "You may call me Armand." It was clear he was the coven master here. 

"How do you do. Arthur Montrose, recently of London," he replied with a disarming smile that did not move the boy in the slightest. 

"Shh, it's all right now, it's passed," Eleni cooed in a whisper, gathering Nicolas to her chest. His eyes were closed, the impromptu gag of a bundle of cloth from Felix's pocket still in his mouth. He shuddered at her touch. 

"Felix, if you would?" Armand asked impassively. The big blond brute scooped up Nicolas effortlessly, holding him close against his chest like an infant, and began to carry him out of the theatre towards backstage. Arthur thought he heard Nicolas give a sigh of relief. 

"Do geniuses in France regularly succumb to screaming writhing fits?" Arthur asked lightly. No one smiled. 

"M. de Lenfent suffered an unfortunate episode of late," Armand said. "One that left its mark, though with hope, not forever. Eleni, we'll have to cancel the auditions tonight, if you could post--"

"Nnhf!" The scream cut him off. Nicolas all but pushed himself off of Felix's grasp, landed hard on the floor on his side, and scrabbled to his feet. Arthur could hear the scraping of his nails and heels against the wooden floor as he barely got himself under coordination. His eyes were alight with fire and he looked feverish, his curly hair wild and unkempt, his clothing untucked and disarranged from his struggles. He stood in a kind of crouch and tore the gag out of his mouth, spitting a little at the taste. He raised a finger and pointed it at Armand. "Auditions continue! If you want this theatre to be anything we need more actors and we need them now! My next plays demand it."

"You are in no state--"

"I can be! I can be, look," Nicolas said, standing and pawing at himself, trying to recreate a passable imitation of a Parisian gentleman, albeit perhaps a bit..."artistic" with his blue frock coat lapels skewed and flipped upwards, his shirt hastily shoved into his breeches. He yanked his fingers through his hair a few times, but that nearly made it worse. "See? Isn't this all you care about?"

"Nicki," Eleni said softly, getting his attention. She kept her wary eyes on Armand, however, as she approached Nicolas slowly, his eyes on her like a wary bird spotted in the woods. With quick, efficient motions she redressed him, straightening his shirt and retying his cravat, then tying his hair back neatly so that if he stood still without the manic look on his face, he looked normal and handsome and well-dressed. "There. That's better."

"Very well, continue. M. Montrose, will you deign to audition after the mortal actors have left? Then you can give us a full display of your talents," Armand said solicitously.

"I'd be happy to," Arthur replied, eyeing Nicolas appraisingly. The young violinist, hands trembling, had gone back to the harpsichord and was rifling through some of the papers stacked there. He looked normal, even handsome, from behind and from the side. But anyone could see from the shaking he was trying to hide that he was not well. Was he always like this?

The violinist yanked a pocket watch from his waistcoat and glanced at it. It gleamed in the darkness, golden and cold, and Arthur could see the violinist's hands were very finely made and delicate. Lenfent shivered, replaced the watch, then nodded to Felix. The tall warrior-like blond dressed in black with a black cape looked doubtful, but he went to the doors to admit the mortal actor hopefuls. It was time. 

He strained to catch Lenfent's eye, but the man seemed to be deliberately avoiding him. Embarrassed? Afraid? When the first whiff of mortal blood hit Arthur's senses he stretched his back a little, luxuriating in the smell in such close quarters. But Lenfent stiffened, and backed against the harpsichord, making the legs squeal a little across the floor. He looked about to press his hands to his ears, but to Arthur's surprise, swallowed and folded his arms tightly. It made him look serious, older, like the music director he was supposed to be.

Women and men alike wafted into the room, announcing themselves to Felix and then taking their seats in the first three rows. Arthur realized that Laurent and Eugenie had already disappeared. Armand and Eleni were watching from stage left back stage, and hastily she made a gesture to wipe the blood sweat off his face. 

Lenfent startled, then drew out a crimson handkerchief no doubt placed for this purpose and wiped his forehead before stuffing it back into his sleeve. 

"Bon soir, madames et messieurs," he called out as the final ones for the next hours trickled in. "Merci d'etre venus ici ce soir. Nous allons commencer avec un soliloque que vous avez prepare, selon les instructions, puis vous recevront chacun differentes lignes et a cinq minutes a repeter comme le prochain candidat effectue la premiere partie de son audition. Allons-nous commencer?"

He seemed to settle a little as the rhythm of normal speech returned, without any talk of mortals or vampires. What had happened to him? He folded his arms again, a little more loosely now, and held up a list. There looked to be nearly thirty names on it, written in a tidy, scholarly hand. 

"M'sieur? Would you like to come away?" Eugenie whispered, appearing with alarming suddenness beside him. Arthur had spent time among mortals too long, hadn't he? He shook his head. 

"I'm flattered, mademoiselle, but if I may, could I watch my competition?" He asked with a grin. 

"Bien sur," she said solemnly, nodding. "Then could I ask M'sieur to take a seat with the other candidates and not interfere with the process? Nicolas is about to begin."

"Oh! Certainly," Arthur said, caught off guard by her complete lack of interest in him. He made his way to a seat just right of center in the second row, bowing a little to the two women seated a seat away from him. 

Once he entered the rhythm of his role, Lenfent revealed to Arthur a tenacity, passion, and eye that he had seen in few directors. 

He was quick to spot talent, but sometimes even the most professional of actors did not pass muster. People who had been at the floorboards for years were being turned down over ingenues, though Lenfent hardly needed to listen to Michel du Croisy from the Comedie-Francaise to poach him for the theatre. Delphine de Peygnac, however, a slight girl with blond hair and frightened eyes who clearly auditioned for a lark, found herself sitting next to du Croisy as another actor who made it. Both Peygnac and Croisy looked confused to see that she had made it.

What possibly amused Arthur the most were the comments Lenfent flung at the actors, either scathing enough to force them to change their technique, or perhaps simply to get rid of them as quickly as possible. He had never worked with such an idiosyncratic director.

It had only taken a two hours for them to go through the entire list, but by then Arthur had had to hold a handkerchief to his mouth, he was laughing so hard. A portly man was turning progressively redder as Nicolas berated him for his lack of grace, calling him a hippopotamus on stilts. To Arthur's surprise, Nicolas asked him to try again. The puerile insults had worked. No doubt thinking of the mental image of himself on stilts, the man more firmly trod the ground, smoothly executing the dance steps and the lines needed. He was admitted (Francois Abbaye) into the next round, and he also stayed behind when all the other mortals had left.

"M'sieur de Lenfent, a word?" he asked quietly as he approached Nicolas, who sat at the harpsichord, making notes to that night's list.

"M'sieur Abbaye," Nicolas asked, putting his pen quill down and rising to bow.

"I've seen quite a few performances. it is why I am so interested in joining," the man said, his voice hearty even at a quieter tone. "Your talent, at such a young age, is remarkable."

"Really," Nicolas said testily, making Arthur pause in his conversation with the departing Mlle de Peygnac all the way at the back of the theatre, and listen in with his vampiric hearing. Even from such a distance, he could spot the trembling.

"You're about my son's age, you know. I wish I'd encouraged him to do what he loved, but he thinks to step away from his father's actor's folly," the man said with a smile. "So I hope you forgive my saying this. I have the utmost respect for your talent, but as a father, I feel I ought to warn you against treating your performers and visitors with such vitriol."

"My apologies for your injured pride," Nicolas mumbled with downcast eyes, reaching into his sleeve for the red handkerchief. He wiped his face, tried to stuff the cloth back into his sleeve, and dropped it instead. Arthur all but pushed the mortal girl out of the theatre and ran down the aisle as quickly and quietly as he could, but the man was already reaching down for the handkerchief and grasping Nicolas' hand to place it between his fingers.

"Are you well, my boy?" he asked with concern, looking at him a little more closely. "You're quite cold."

"I can hear everything," Nicolas whispered, staring at him, stricken. "Your hand is burning me. Didn't I last long enough?"

"Why don't you take a seat and I will go get Mlle du Louvois and M de Quintheau," Abbay‚Äö√†√∂¬¨¬© said, trying to tug the violinist, only to find him unmovable.

"I need. . .Ç" Nicolas began, eyes wide as he reached for Abbaye's arm, the man's gaze growing sightless and dazed.

"Here, let me," Arthur said, barging in between them, gentling pushing Abbaye away and seating Nicolas down at the bench.

"What's going on?" he hissed softly. "What are you doing to him?"

"What? I'm not doing anything! It's too much, I can hear it all, I can feel the violet in his waistcoat! Make it stop! It won't stop!"

"What won't stop! Listen, you have to let him go! Send him home, stop enthralling him," Arthur tried to explain. What was Lenfent, a fledgling? "What do you mean you can hear it all?"

"You can't hear it?" Lenfent asked frantically. He clutched Arthur's arm almost painfully. "I heard it, all night, I've been hearing, and it has to be written down, I need to, they need to hear it, I need to get it out of my head!"

"What's 'it', what are you hearing?" Arthur asked. The mortal was glassy-eyed and breathing shallowly, but Lenfent had still not released him. "Release the mortal and we can talk about this."

"I'm not doing anything to him. Sometimes it happens, they, they want it or something," Nicolas replied helplessly. "I don't know."

"Good God," Arthur muttered. A fledgling who hadn't even been taught to use the mind gifts. A mad one at that, using them on instinct. "Here." He shoved some fresh paper and a pen at Lenfent, who jumped as if the feel of them hurt his fingertips. But the effect was instantaneous--he began writing right away, and the man relaxed, stumbled, and managed to snatch Arthur's hand.

"Pardon," he muttered, his other hand rubbing his temple.

"You had a silly turn, didn't you?" Arthur asked, putting an arm around the man and walking them up to the end of the theatre. He risked a backward glance at Lenfent, but he was deep in his work. Papers were flung to the floor haphazardly when he was done with them. Arthur winced. He hoped the composer numbered the pages. 

"See you next week!" he called, shutting the door behind the mortal after he left the theatre. It was time for his audition.

When he turned back, Eleni was fussing over Nicolas, though the composer completely ignored her. The music had him now, whatever it was, and Arthur was relieved he'd lasted through the end of the mortal auditions. No telling what a panicked immortal with a fledgling's madness about his gifts could wreak.

"Thank you, for stepping in," Eleni said as he approached the two. They could have been brother and sister, pale faces, dark eyes and hair. Nicolas did not heed her hand on his shoulder, bent as he was over the papers.

"Does M. de Lenfent frequently find it, trying, to well, be himself?" Arthur asked lightly.

"It's nothing," Eleni replied defensively, and Arthur had the distinct impression of a cat with her hair raised. It had come from the fledgling, whether he knew it or not. 

"My mistake," Arthur replied with a slight bow, putting his fingertips against his chest. "Shall I return tomorrow night, when the music has a less pressing hold?"

That was when it went terribly wrong. Eleni was still standing there, yes, trying to rouse Nicolas to answer, when the thorns came back. The world shifted and Arthur thought he felt the dark parts of the unlit theatre press in on him, those thorns that weren't there pulling him down, holding him in place. 

"Really, M. de Lenfent, if you wanted me to stay, you only had to say," he said, trying to keep his voice level. He thought he could feel the vines digging into his skin, wrapping around him, and knew if he looked down he'd see things that weren't there. 

"What are you talking about?" Eleni asked, so protective. Were they maker and fledgling? It didn't seem possible. She seemed so responsible, but Arthur had known worse mothers who spoiled their children to neglect. 

"Did you see the thorns, earlier?" Arthur asked, making her give a start. Her expression took on a guarded look. 

"No," she hazarded cautiously. "No, I, only saw Nicki's suffering. Why?"

"I can see them again. M. de Lenfent, this is most undignified," he said a bit hastily, because he needed to breathe and was very quickly not going to be able to, no matter what he told himself. 

"Nicki, what are you doing? Nicki?" she asked, shaking him out of his working frenzy. Instantly the vise of thorns vanished, making Arthur stagger and try to hide it by leaning against the base of the stage. 

"What, what is it?" Nicolas asked, shrugging Eleni off and turning back to his work almost hypnotically, not looking up from the page still as he wrote and spoke. "He's fine, he can stay. Leave me alone."

"Which is it?" Arthur asked, amused, but the haphazard way in which this half-mad fledgling flung out his powers unnerved him. "And my audition?" Nicolas finally turned and blinked at him. 

"Felix doesn't like acting. We need a blond rake to destroy hearts," he said. "Can you be that? Can you do better?"

Arthur put on his most roguish smile and rattled off a few lines from the latest Drury Lane play without even having to strike a pose, then practically melted into a senile old man who delivered the answering dialogue. Eleni could not conceal her delight. A real actor! Someone they could learn from. Never mind the English. He spoke French well and he could lend some exoticism, melt into any role. 

"Do you do any stage fighting?" Lenfent's question was but a whisper.  
He had stopped writing and was staring at Arthur now. Was he impressed? Disturbed?

"A specialty of mine, with fisticuffs or sword. I can enchant the audience with my mind--"

"No!" Nicolas nearly shouted as he stood up abruptly and stuck a finger in Arthur's face. They were very close now, and he could see the very faint trembling in his delicate hands, the finely made cheekbones that made him look a little more serious than his youth suggested, and those soft inviting lips, twisted as they were in displeasure. His eyes were very dark, their wide gaze lit by some fire of passion and intent that Arthur warmed to. Not for the first time, Arthur gave thanks that immortals as a general rule were chosen from God's most beautiful creatures. 

"None of that, none of those old Dark Arts!" Nicolas said, his voice low and heated as he gesticulated wildly. "I would have the art speak for itself, and my players devoted to that effect alone."

Arthur chuckled, and in the face of that laugh Nicolas' expression withered. Arthur did not want to see that directed at him ever again. 

"Spoken like a true artist, M'sieur. You're right. I offered only to suggest, not as a regular practice of mine, and I was mistaken in your philosophy. It would be an insult to my considerable talents as it is, to do such a thing with your sublime work and my sublime acting," he said, without a trace of mockery in his voice. 

"Fine," Nicolas said, waving his hand. "I take it as my distinct pleasure and honor to invite you to join us, blah blah, you can guess the rest. Eleni and our lordly," and Arthur could have sword Lenfent would spit at the word if he could, "M'sieur de Romanus can set the terms and the manner of your stay with us. Welcome, if you will grant us the occasion of your happy acceptance." He seemed to lose interest quickly, turning back to his work even as his voice trailed off. 

"Congratulations," Eleni said, her voice warm but her expression doubtful and wary. "Come with me."

When they left the cavernous space, Lenfent a lone figure by candlelight still writing in the darkness, and entered the wooden hallway, Arthur stopped. 

"A moment, mademoiselle," he said. "Do you mean to tell me you did not see the visions he produced when he had his fit, and just now?"

His question made Eleni take on a caught expression. 

"No," she said, and Arthur told himself to remember what she looked like when she lied. "It's bad enough Armand saw. Now you talk of a fledgling inducing visions?"

"If I am to join--my pardons, if I were to accept this gracious opportunity, it would be to everyone's advantage if I could assist in, ah, managing our director's idiosyncrasies."

"It is nothing. It is as Armand said. There was some recent trauma. He will get better." He has to. There must be something left for us to save in that whirling maelstrom. 

"If that's all you can say-" Arthur raised his hands in surrender. He knew he wanted to be a part of this. To be otherwise was to lose the opportunity of an immortal lifetime. "Do I still need an interview with your coven master?"

"That won't be necessary. I'll talk to Armand. If Nicki says you have talent and you are willing, I will make the argument for the rest," Eleni said. "Armand will most likely insist that you stay with us for the first year. Have you established quarters in the area?"

"Not yet. I have my things at a boarding house not far from here," Arthur said. 

"Good. You can bring them tonight. We'll assign a room to you. We have begun performing a number of dark wonders, such as our kind has never lived before. I am eager to see what you can bring to our efforts," Eleni told him. She looked distracted for a moment, and Arthur followed her gaze to see Armand heading down the hall towards them, a creature of consummate grace and menace. Or was that just what Arthur sensed she felt? There was real fear of the coven master, here. He held genuine authority. 

"M'sieur Montrose, will you be joining our little group?" Armand asked in that angel's voice. A boy, almost a man when he was made. But Arthur sensed from him the terrifying experience of centuries. 

"I would be honored to accept the invitation. Mlle du Louvois and I were just discussing the arrangements," Arthur said with a slight bow. 

"And M de Lenfent?" Armand asked with a raised eyebrow. He did not elaborate further. Arthur met his gaze, considering. His response would seal his fate. He had no doubt Armand could destroy him, though he'd have to put up with a fight. 

Arthur shrugged and gave what he hoped was a disarming smile. "I was a minstrel as a mortal, and an actor even as an immortal. All theatres are madhouses, all theatre companies squabbling families whose members are mad to perpetuate the endeavor with each other. In these times, with M de Lenfent's outbursts? It would only be the fashion."

A look crossed Armand's face that didn't seem to enjoy living there. The coven master was surprised. 

"How modern," the little incubus said. "Would that all vampires thought this way. We would have nothing to be cautious about." He held out a hand of welcome. "Bienvenue, Arthur Montrose, to the Theatre des Vampires."

The incident with the thorns concerned and confused Eleni. Nicolas was only a fledgling. Surely he could not have created those visions?


	5. Schoolfellows and Opium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicolas de Lenfent spent nine years at the Theatre des Vampires, in the same city where he attended La Sorbonne and worked for Renaud's. It was obvious his schoolfellows would find him and drag him into old habits. For Eleni, it is a chance to understand this isolated and deteriorating fledgling. 
> 
> When Nicolas finally connects with a new cast member, Armand sees to it that he is isolated once more.
> 
> This chapter contains: Mental Instability, Mental Health Issues, Opium, Implied/Referenced Past Alcoholism, Politics, Hallucinations, Gore, Horror

A few weeks later, she found him writing in his room as he did every night. Blood was splattered all down his front and he was in a good mood, excited and frenetic in his motions. His hair was wild, and he chewed occasionally on a strand that made its way into his mouth before sputtering and spitting it out. He was pacing, a manic hum issuing from his lips, his left fingers running on an invisible fingerboard while his right held a quill pen, rushing to write down--thankfully in an immaculate neat hand--the notes of the next play. He was always like this with the music. Either he couldn't help it, or he simply permitted it to capture him and fuel his creativity. 

"How is he?" Eleni whispered to Felix and Arthur, who were sewing costumes a little ways from his door. Nicolas had recently and painfully protested with violence against the way Felix guarded him right outside. He couldn't think, he claimed, couldn't hear anything but his stupid Crusades and his stupid Dulotisms and it was drowning out all his music with military drums, even though Felix never uttered a word, solemn as he was about the importance of the work. None of them understood what he was talking about, except perhaps Felix, because the vampire had removed himself to a little ways down the hall without any comment. He got on well with Arthur, surprisingly, though one was an ascetic and the other an aesthete. Arthur knew the minstrel songs Felix grew into a man with. 

"He seems frustrated and unsettled," Felix said. "I think he needs to go out."

"He's been out. You saw him when he came in, smelling like fresh blood, almost dripping it everywhere!" Arthur said, tugging a little viciously on the thread. Eleni saw a smudge of dried blood smeared on his wrist and the back of his hand. Nicolas' wrists and cuffs had been bloody. His hands had been clean. 

"You shouldn't have laid hands on him. You remind him of someone he never wants to see again, I told you that. You frightened him," Felix said severely. 

"I just wanted..I let him go the instant he started twisting around, didn't I?" Arthur asked, and Eleni grabbed him by the lapels. 

"Don't touch Nicki. Even when Felix or I touch him, it makes him nervous but he tolerates it, for our sake, so that we know he is trying. I don't want to think about what he feels when you do it," she said, and this time Arthur needed no mental prompting to have the impression of a hellcat with her hair raised in defense of her young. Felix had told him that she was not Nicki's maker, though. His maker was far away. Abandoned him. It was as if Eleni had adopted him instead. 

"I promise. Unless he does the same to me first," Arthur said. "You cannot expect a gentleman to eschew his own defense." She relented, releasing him back to his work. 

"I'm taking him out, then," she told Felix. She knocked gently against the door jamb, for in those days they kept his door open. Who would disturb him? Their coven was tiny. 

Nicolas had not heard. She stepped into the room and around him, knowing he could not see her in his trance, or was it that he could block her out as a non-threat? No one knew how his mind worked sometimes, and it pained her to think she might never reach a part of him. 

She collected some new clothes, a linen shirt, a red coat he liked, and stooped to see if anything else needed changing. The jug of water was full, and she filled the washbasin and dipped a cloth in. She sat down on the armchair by the bookcase and folded her hands neatly in her lap against the black satin of her dress.

"Nicki," she said softly, when he had paused to write. "Will you come out with me? I want to see more of the city." She didn't really need a guide anymore. But she missed their trips, the way he would explain it to her, and lose himself in his exuberance for sharing the small treasures of the world, forgetting to be bitter or sad or afraid. It made her feel like she could know him a little better. He liked watches and clocks, and they had spent hours peering through watchmaker shop windows, until he let slip that he had played at the village watchmaker's workshop as a child, fascinated with how the cogs and wheels and gears fit together perfectly. You just had to twist or turn or flip them onto a different plane or angle of intersection. A different view, a new perspective, everything fit and for a reason, without waste, if the watchmaker did everything efficiently and considered the cost and speed and function of each element. Everything had its place, eventually. The way his expression had crumpled when he found himself saying this had broken her heart. His kill had been particularly vicious that night. 

He looked up at her as if blind and trying to sound out her voice. His expression cleared, and he gave her a tired but indulgent smile. Spotting the bowl, he teased, "so certain I'll say yes, Mademoiselle?"

She gave a soft laugh, then rose and coaxed his bloody shirt and undershirt off him. His breeches were sufficiently black to hide any stains, and she slid the damp cloth over his features tenderly, wiping the dried blood away. He let her, looking down and trying to emerge from the frenzy of composing, trying to calm himself into normal speech and normal gestures. She pulled the shirt over his head, brushed his silken curls back with a silver toothed comb, and tied it neatly with a black velvet ribbon. He accepted the red coat and even put it on tidily, presenting himself to her for inspection. She fixed a tidy black hat upon his head and a woman's upon her own, striking a pose with her arms akimbo as she looked up at him.

"Very handsome," she said with a smile. "Won't the handsome gentleman take my arm and show me the evening?"

He bowed, all manners, and offered his arm to her, back straight. Sometimes it was strange to see the transformation, from frenetic madman to composed gentleman. She had to make mental adjustments. 

"And where would mademoiselle like to go?" He asked solicitously as they stepped out of the theatre into the street. The night was early and there were plenty of people about. 

"Lenfent? Ho, fellows, it's Nicolas de Lenfent!" A voice rang out in the crowd. Nicolas stiffened, and she thought she saw a suffering look flit across his face, before a hand grabbed him and spun him around. 

"How the hell have you been?" Asked a youth with dark blond hair, embracing Nicolas and patting him roughly on the back. 

"Hey, it really is him! Lenfent, we haven't seen you in ages!"

"You're looking well! Are you still chasing tail at this theatre?" Someone jabbed him jokingly in the ribs. 

"Mercipol still talks about you, Lenfent, you know that terrible nasal voice of his, why don't you come back?"

"Yeah, by then maybe Jacques will finally finish his studies. Isn't this the fifth time you've had to take Advanced Latin Philosophy and Hermeneutics with Mercipol?" The speaker slung an arm around Nicolas, who was looking a little stunned. The others laughed and stole the unfortunate Jacques' hat, passing it from person to person. 

"Introduce us to your sister, won't you? Hey, will you marry me?" Someone said a little boorishly in her face. She slapped him, sending him reeling, and the others guffawed. A few of them were clearly drunk. 

"Yeah Lenfent, you never told us you had a sister. How is Etienne by the way? Has he come up yet?"

"Nicolas?" She asked him sweetly. He never spoke of his mortal life, not in these intimate terms. Who was Etienne?

"Please forgive our rudeness, Mademoiselle," a pale youth with black hair stepped up with a slight bow. They were all a similar age, but he carried himself with more seriousness than the rest, rather the way Nicolas did. "We have not seen our compatriot in a year, and a few of us are between parties. We are only glad to see him, and perhaps insulted, though I understand why he would keep such a treasure like mademoiselle to her own privacy."

"And you are?" She asked, aware she looked a little older, too old to be a wife surely, not old enough to be a mother. Sister, cousin, or aunt seemed plausible. She cast about. Different last names. Fewer lies.

"M'sieur Robert de Deneau, at your service," the black-haired youth said with another bow. 

"What's he going on about, at your service! Lenfent, aren't you going to say something?"

"Deneau's putting the moves on your sister!"

"If she's not your sister can I have a go?" This was asked in doggerel Latin, assuming a woman like Eleni would not be educated in it. Again, the collective schoolboy laughter. 

At that, Nicolas seemed to rouse himself, for he turned and dealt the speaker a punch to the face that sent him crashing to the ground. The mortal laughed as he lay on his back, holding a handkerchief to his nose. Eleni's nostrils flared at the scent of blood, but there seemed to be no ill feeling. 

"On opium again, Pascal?" Nicolas asked with disdain, offering him a hand and pulling him up from the cobbles. He ducked a laughing punch thrown at him before the mortal held up his hands and conceded. 

"I am sorry, mademoiselle. High spirits of dissolute students and former students," the one Nicolas had called Pascal said, still holding his handkerchief to his nose. "Pascal du Maurier. And Nicolas has had his run of the opium dens, I assure you!"

"I--" Nicolas gave a start, then ran an exasperated hand over his face. "Eleni, these are, regrettably, my friends from university. Gentlemen--"

"I am his cousin. Eleni du Louvois. Distant cousin," she said. "From Lyon."

"Ah, a Lyonnaise girl!" The one called Jacques leered, making an obscene, suggestive gesture. Nicolas punched him too, in the stomach, and the others held the violinist back by his coat, but Jacques took it in stride and they released their fellow. "Ow! You've built some muscle, Lenfent. What have you been up to?"

"Yes, let's get to a coffeehouse or a tavern. I want to hear what artistic life we've all been missing, poor wretches at the Sorbonne that we are."

"And we must bring your beau-bell-pretty cousin too. The nighttime streets are no place for such a charming mademoiselle."

"And there are things we must talk of." A serious note, from Robert de Deneau. 

"I'd like to. Can we, Nicki?" Eleni asked, granting him permission. Perhaps he had not wanted it, but she would take every opportunity to understand him better. It would be hard for him to refuse her, in public like this with these other young men watching. As the gentleman he was supposed to be her chaperone. 

"Fine. But no drinking or taking anything," Nicolas warned, as their shoulders were embraced and the party carried on to the nearest coffeehouse. 

"No drinking? Is this really you, Lenfent?"

"Shut up," Robert told the speaker quite earnestly. 

"Boris meant nothing by it," Nicolas said, waving it off, but he seemed to shrink as they entered the noisy establishment and commandeered a corner. 

"Wine and coffee! We have a long lost brother back," a red-headed student in a canary yellow coat told the proprietor. 

"So does running across you on the Boulevard du Temple mean you're still with Renaud's?"

They crowded around eagerly. 

"I heard they left for London."

"What happened?"

"Pierre told me you got new rooms on the Ile St Louis."

"How come Lenfent invited you but not me?"

"Did he make you stay?" Robert asked sourly. 

"What?" Nicolas asked, startled. 

"I went to see your lawyer. Well, that marquis' son's lawyer. What was it, Retter, Rotet, no, Roget, oui? He told me to look out for you. You weren't well, something to do with the marquis. No one could find you but the marquis' son insisted you were safe, on your way to Naples. Roget was concerned, despite his employer's words, that there was foul play. There was some queer business with his mother, apparently."

"Isn't that how those lords and ladies are?" Nicolas asked with a faint laugh, drawing chuckles from the table. They were all boys, Eleni realized. Someone had sent them off to school and they had found each other and fought and lived and laughed like brothers and said stupid cocky things and teased each other for love and fumbling discovery. They called each other by their Christian names (sometimes) and grew to their permanence together (though some stayed behind), sharing their mistakes as brats and reliving them tonight. They had learned to be young men together and would learn to grow old together and now Nicolas was frozen in time. 

"How do you all know Nicki?" She asked boldly. 

"Why mademoiselle, we boarded together when we were at the Sorbonne! Jacques de Tellrand is still at the Sorbonne because your dear cousin isn't around anymore to nurse him through Latin but maybe in a hundred years he'll finish."

"What are you all doing together tonight then?" Eleni asked innocently. 

"It's been five years since we first met. You know, it is why we were even around tonight. Germaine Altier had a crazy idea to look for Nicolas here, see if we could find him."

"Best opium trip ever," Germaine declared, fingers splayed for emphasis. 

"Where are all of you now?" Nicolas asked, warming up to their enthusiasm. They had sought him out, for old time's sake, to celebrate what they had all been to each other. No condemnation, no mocking puzzled insults for the dissolute life he'd chosen and the unnatural bond he held with the aristocrat, as careful as they were. There was no bitterness in his voice and Eleni sighed inwardly, wishing that could be the case when he was at the theatre. Perhaps they were wrong to insist on his residency there. It only reminded him of his traumas at their hands. Not like here, with his former friends, back in the light of the world and life?

It was strange to see him with that warm smile, and as beautiful and fixed in time as he was among these soft mortal bodies, he still looked at ease, less of a statue and more like one of them again. Maybe this was what Felix had hoped, that Nicki's nerves would be quieted by something not from their world, but the one he left. Eleni could see what had attracted Lestat to Nicki in the first place, for that easygoing cynicism and humor belied the pure honesty of his earnestness. When he was in conversation he came alive, as if aglow. She had not seen him like that except in his mad musical frenzies, and to see it now in normal behavior gave her a rush of pleasure and of pity. 

"These four all went into law after all. Maurier ended up with a scribbling position for a count," said the one called Boris. He was very drunk. 

"And you, Tellrand? And the great Deneau, future orator to the parlement?" Nicolas asked, and the mockery in his tone was playful. 

"The revolution is coming," Deneau said gravely, looking around them and leaning in. Interested, Nicolas crossed his arms, shifting his weight onto them as he leaned towards Deneau across the table. In the comparatively bright candlelight of the tavern, his curls were a rich chocolate brown, and though they were tied with a large blue ribbon, the loop of hair it created tumbled loosely onto his shoulder. She had combed his hair back as she did for formal events, when it ought to be sleek and straight as she could make it, but he had scuffled with his old schoolmates, and his natural part had asserted itself. His eyes were large as they fixed on Deneau, watchful of their surroundings, his eyebrows intelligent and quirked, always alert for the conversation. Only a faint twitching of his smallish mouth gave him away, as if he couldn't decide whether to smile or laugh or frown or speak or scream or remain silent.

"And which one would that be?" he asked mockingly.

"You know what I'm talking about!" Deneau said. "We have been worried, wondering where you are at the meetings." Eleni saw Nicolas' eyes flick quickly to the others, but they were in conversation and trying to get drunk. Someone had told the proprietor that it was all on Lenfent's tab.

"I have been preoccupied of late," Nicolas replied, still watching their friends, his eyes enormous. His mouth was a thin line, his voice quiet, and a slight shudder went through him. She wondered what he thought of, but dared not venture even near his mind. Not right now. Not in public, with so many people.

"Will you come back? We need as many as we can get. They are talking of the Bastille, of the armory, Lenfent," Deneau hissed urgently. "There is too much happening, too much at stake to stop now!"

"What's this? Fantastical philosophies and governments that shall never come to pass? Come and drink with us, what are you whispering about?" asked a dark-haired young man. He slung an arm suddenly around Nicki's shoulders, and he startled before staring at the wine glass that was thrust into his hand.

"Yes, Deneau, talk to him later about it, we'll find him again," Boris slurred, shoving him on the shoulder and handing a bottle to him as well.

"Look, Lenfent, do you still chase the dragon? Because I found this great place the other day, we must go together. I am chasing this girl who only serves the cake in the afternoon with another, and I need a partner to distract the other. Germaine is no longer allowed," said the man who had his arm around Nicki's shoulders.

"M'sieur du Maurier, I sleep all day and louche all night," Nicolas said loftily, and grinned an almost wicked grin, but his hands were shaking as they held the wine glass. She could see his eyes darting around the room and even the ceiling. His face was as calm and alert as ever though, and she did not feel alarmed yet. "Why don't you take my dear cousin?"

"Ah yes, mademoiselle, my dear belle," said a young man from the other end of the table. He quickly rose and shifted down to sit next to Eleni. "I cannot believe your cousin has never told us about you."

"So do they just have you working all the time? We ought to have lunch some time. My office is not far from your little theatre and my physician has been prescribing me daily walks," another man who had not named himself said. He took out a pipe and lit it, much to Eleni's chagrin. He took a few puffs and Nicki's reaction was automatic, reaching for it and doing the same. The action mesmerized Eleni, watching his lips move forward to breathe in and then puff out the smoke, and his hands holding the polished wood with practiced ease before he handed it to the Maurier beside him. It went around the table in an old ritual they knew without even thinking.

"Then I'll just become another infamous Charmoud mistress," Nicolas said, blowing smoke out of his nose. It was such a mortal thing to do that Eleni was momentarily disoriented.

"Yes, but I'll buy you lunch!" the man called Charmoud pointed out, handing over the pipe. "Who have you been chasing these days then? Some frighteningly sharp scribe or actress?"

"I'm married to my work," Nicolas told him quite earnestly, puffing on the pipe in thought. "How's your sister, though?"

"You asshole," Charmoud told Nicolas affectionately. "My sister wouldn't sell you a newspaper much less allow you to court her."

"I never said I was going to court her," Nicolas chuckled, ducking Charmoud's playful swipe and handing over the pipe.

What had they done? Eleni had helped the others ruin him. It was a kind of rape, to shove him onto the cold polished surface of the pianoforte in his flat and puncture his skin, relishing and cackling at his screams as he jolted with each bite, still trying to fight them. She could remember it was if it were yesterday, for the guilt lingered with her at the pleasure she had taken from his pain and his terror. His limbs had been so soft, mortal limbs to squeeze and blacken with bruises. Mortals were so weak, Augustine had remarked as he aimed a particularly vicious kick at the young mortal's stomach, making him keel over, coughing blood. Charlotte had grabbed his face and squeezed his cheeks painfully, licking the blood from his mouth and lips, biting them and making him choke deep in his throat from the pain. 

She had been uneasy about this kind of treatment, not knowing what Armand's ultimate plans for him were, but she supposed that if he were going to send his followers out for capture and terrorizing, he would know what liberties they might allow themselves. And then she had slapped his face and struck him in the head and the shoulder, shoving him against Pierre and snarling as she sank her fangs, deep and delicious, into his shoulder. He cringed beneath her, limbs jerking erratically despite the pain, and she could feel her brothers and sisters taking him, their fangs and lips thudding against his skin as she sipped leisurely from the wound she had made. Some of them scraped their tongues and fangs over his skin and his cheek to taunt more fear out of him, and the half-coherent, broken-off pleas issuing from his mouth made it all the more delicious. There were enough of them to hold him up in the air, and enough to take him over and over until he stopped struggling and was nothing more than a limp, moaning bundle of limbs. And she had loved it, every second of it, a delicious struggling prey, a young mortal full of life and vigor and blood. 

What a travesty to walk through his mind then, to shriek like a banshee through the salons that housed his thoughts and his order and his process, to smash the windows and mirrors, to claw at the wallpaper and spray the floors with blood. And he had been nowhere to be found, so she and the others let loose, taking the beautiful carved fireplace apart, tearing the paintings apart, there was that blond fool, that new fledgling they would one day take down or take in. Yes, this had once been the mind of a gentleman, and they had done all they could to leave it in ruins. And he had wept, oh, how he had wept, it had rained in his mind outside in the neat shrubs and the Italian garden that burned with the hellfire they had spread despite the downpour, and in the real world, he had convulsed in their arms, his eyes blind because his mind only had enough energy to take in the pain and little other stimulus. Felix suggested they bring him in, stop the fun. The mortal was useless now for normal life, after what he'd seen and what they'd done, and if they wanted to continue this they could do so in Les Innocents.

Dieu, and when they shoved him in the cage, those dull lifeless eyes, thought and action and nightmare blended into a numbness that was the only thing that could allow him to survive in that hellish pit. That was the only time when she had doubted what they had done. She supposed they deserved the trouble his madness would bring them now, for all that they were the cause of it.

And now, sitting here in the smoke and bright candles of this tavern, watching Nicolas act like he might have before Les Innocents ever touched him, she felt the pangs of guilt seize her heart.

"I will admit, you surprised us all," Tellrand said, leaning back in his chair. "We were all little shits, laughing at you for following your dream. Now you've shown us what you can do."

"What, put on ill-formed, macabre grand guignol for 5 francs a night?" Nicolas asked scornfully. "Don't flatter me."

"What grand guignol? You've got to have more blood on stage if you're going to go for that, Lenfent, I thought you were an artist!"

"He is an artist, that's why it's metaphorical grand guignol."

"So ah, Luchinda and Jeanette still there? Tellrand tried to ask casually.

"Why, were you fucking them on the side?" Nicolas asked, a dark look passing over his face.

"Jesus, you know how it is with actresses," Tellrand said. "I know they went home with you sometimes but you can't tell me--"

"Wait wait shut up. Both, are you telling me two actresses went home with this fool violinist?" Deneau demanded, boyishness dissolving his serious mien.

"You had them both at the same time, didn't you?" Germaine Altier grinned, punching Nicolas on the shoulder. The vampire looked down, and they mistook it for shyness. 

"What is that like! My god, if I think about what I have to do to get Julie to try something new," Charmoud said, putting his head in his hands.

"It wasn't like that," Nicolas said quietly, staring at the grain of the wooden table. He seemed to shrink. "Only at first, when he left, they would keep me company. But then they wanted more than my company, and a gentleman does not refuse the whims of a lady in his own house, does he?"

And it was true. When the drinking hadn't been so bad yet, the girls had taken the opportunity to wallow in the luxuries Lestat had sent Nicolas. They tried to draw Nicki out, coax him to eat something, anything from the fine china. He had tried, he had really tried to be more than a sullen lovelorn obsessive fool, but it had proven impossible. Unresponsive to their conversation at last, Nicolas watched as if from afar as they tried their flirtations, bored with their host, upon him. It was hard to refuse them, the drink was in him all the time now, and in the lurching nausea and agony of his drunken grief the soft press of bodies against him was truthfully a little comfort. And they had all "played" together, the four of them, hadn't they? He'd come out of his daze with Jeanette or Luchinda writhing above him, and he'd watch, mesmerized, as she pleasured herself on his body while the other kissed down her back and took her turn. Or he'd let their soft voices, so tender and loving compared to the only words he heard in his head, guide him. Yes, sink down here, Nicki, here let us help, come in come in, on your elbows, now push just a little, yes darling, God that's good, make him do it again, Luci, no, Nicki, it's just me behind you, don't be scared, don't worry, shush, shush we'll take care of you, now then, we'll begin. He had closed up and let them use him, like a puppet, like a toy, too lost to even take pleasure in it. Responding with no more focus or desire than that of a trained animal. 

His gaze flicked to Eleni, doing her best to conceal her shock and pity, and that was all he did not need. Nicolas closed his eyes, as if trying to will the memory away, but the others mistook it for reminiscence.

"You sly fox," Tellrand said, grinning.

"Your friend left? Your old roommate?"

"They all left," Nicolas said, his voice flat as he looked up at them. "Renaud's is in England and I'm still here and I won't even speak his name."

A silence descended. Air drained from the room. 

"Come on, drink up, I need that glass back," Maurier told him finally. Deneau watched Nicolas carefully.

"I'm not," Nicolas struggled to say, and looked down at the table again, clenching his jaw and squeezing his eyes shut. "I'm not supposed to, not any more."

"What are you supposed to drink instead? Air?"

"Leave him alone, will you? We can water it down, Lenfent, it's all right. Let's talk about something else."

"I don't want to hear any more talk of politics tonight either, Deneau, really, you're going to get Lenfent into some noble speech about the ideals of freedom and justice and balance again and we'll be here until morning. Or the past."

"Heh," Nicolas muttered, back stiffening as he looked up, and his eyes were a little wild. "Morning."

"Nicki," Eleni murmured, trying to wake him out of whatever it was he was seeing and thinking. Question about his past unsettled him. Mentions of Lestat drove him mad with anger. The last letter had resulted in having to find new furniture for Armand's office. The sight of those fingers gripping a chair so hard the wood splintered beneath them, of wood crashing against the wall and of the skin on his knuckles splitting open from the force of his strikes against anything he could get his hands on. Armand had allowed him to smash every stick of furniture in the room into pieces no bigger than a matchstick, and it had not been enough, and when Nicolas went for Armand in a veil of bloodlust and fury, Armand had taken him down like a wild animal, surgically gripping the back of his neck and forcing him down to the ground with the strength of his years. But Nicolas had surprised them all, had slipped somehow, it must have been a trick of the light, from Armand's grasp, and they could not find him anywhere in the theatre until Eugenie thought to look in the catacombs being excavated beneath the property. This time it was Eleni who approached the figure tightly curled up on the floor, hugging his knees as he rocked back and forth, his forehead gently pushing off the wall he faced. And those sensible eyes had recognized what she was trying to do, and it was like watching that mortal man surface again, halfway from his shell as he took the violin from her fingers and made them all shiver with the thrum of strings. And then she had led him back upstairs, Armand and Laurent trailing behind, and he had thanked her politely and shut the door to his room. She could hear him begin to weep, muffled and soft and restrained, and there was little she could do. 

"Won't you tell them about your new plays?" she asked, hoping to funnel it to a musical interlude instead.

"I haven't written them yet," Nicolas replied. "Some of them will have Arthur as the lead but there will be more dancing for you."

"So you are part of his new theatre! I hadn't realized!" Deneau smiled warmly at her. Nicolas was relaxing now, and he placed the wineglass carefully on the table, and his hands didn't tremble.

"My cousin is very talented," Nicolas said with a gentleman's cultured air, eyes bright and eager. "She dances and she acts, but she is quick and sharp and manages much of the affairs of the theatre. Including myself."

"I admire a woman who takes charge," Deneau replied. "Ma'mselle, if you would permit me to visit you, or at least to attend any productions with your artistry displayed?" Eleni raised a gloved hand to her lips and smiled politely.

"Look, even if they're gone, Renaud's here with you as a composer this time, think of it, a composer and a playwright, not just first violin, that's something, and the theatre is more popular than it had ever been under that old fatty. I hear colleagues even mentioning it in order to appear fashionable," Charmoud assured him.

"The students scalp those tickets at stupid prices. You should raise the prices, you know," Tellrand advised Eleni. "They'll still sell."

"How much can M'iseur afford?" she asked teasingly, drawing a warm smile from Nicolas.

"My heart, dear heart, my heart!" Tellrand said. "Tell your cousin to come back, finish his studies with me. I need the help."

"He is doing well and he is precious to everyone at the theatre," she sniffed. "Why don't you hire a tutor?"

"Can't afford it," Tellrand shrugged. 

"You know what I do miss," Jean Charmoud said, leaning forward and handing over the pipe. "You used to be great at organizing, Lenfent. Mlle Louvois, your cousin would always be pulling people in to some kind of gathering, encouraging us to get together."

"We'd have such a night, tearing through coffeehouses, arguing and fighting with people about everything and anything," Tellrand mused.

"And then when we'd gotten kicked out of, oh, the third one, we'd go to a tavern, start a political argument there, and then spill out onto the streets singing and standing on balustrades giving speeches," Boris said. "It was great fun."

"After you left, I think we tried another one of those runs, but it wasn't the same. Not as many people came, and the proprietors didn't really kick us out," Maurier said sadly. "We did get banned from one though."

"You just don't know how to piss them off in the right way," Nicolas replied, seemingly having himself back under control.

"Look, I can't stand this anymore," Deneau finally said, leaning forward to speak conspiratorially. "The talks are getting worse, and the king is doing nothing. I very much fear this will come to a violent head."

"What do you want to do about it?" Eleni asked, genuinely curious. All of these former students, boys together, now young men, had moderately successful lives. A few were married, some with children already. Charmoud had shown her a locket with a double portrait of his wife and child, two tiny paintings exquisitely rendered. To foment revolution, to talk about violent ends, was to give up all that.

"This is for France," Deneau declared. "If we must take up arms, let us do so to as much effect as we can, so that the loss of life and peace can be as little as possible. Lenfent, you have to come back and attend these meetings. I want you to help me get the word out, and Charmoud's right, you have a talent for bringing people together. You can read and write, and we have this American visitor who thinks he can help us get our hands on our own printing press. The time is right, Lenfent, really."

"I don't have to do anything," Nicolas said abruptly. "Let this come to a violent head. Let the blood flow on the streets and thereby cleanse them. If we must reinvent as a country, we can do it the way its people want, and that is going to be bloody and brutal and by the mob. A bourgeois revolution is no revolution at all."

"Not that again!" Charmoud groaned. "I need to get home. It's getting late!"

"Do you not wish to help your brother out of his blindness in the cave?" Maurier asked Nicolas genially.

"If the brother is illiterate because of the system we are trying to overthrow, what use are the pamphlets Deneau wants to print?" Nicolas asked scornfully. "You're just talking to yourself."

"We can guide them by guiding our misguided fellows. This can only work if France unites as one. We are all the Third Estate, but if you want to divide it into a bourgeois revolution, as you say, then it must be a bourgeois revolution of one mind," Deneau insisted. "Come to Rue Saint-Jacques some time and see. We have another meeting, in Versailles, if you'll come with me. It is soon."

"I am glad for you, that you have Siey√®s and Robespierre to consult with--" Nicolas began.

"How do you know--" Deneau began, startled.

"Don't be stupid, Deneau," Nicolas said, giving him a sharp look Eleni had never seen before, and she realized that Nicolas had given the theatre a very different part of himself. "I pay attention and I hear the talk. You're not nearly as secretive as you think. You might as well hang a sign on your door."

"We are not a formal collective of--"

"Besides, with talk of fighting breaking out all over France and now in Paris itself, and Siey√®s and Barnave not doing anything about it, you can't assume important people aren't talking to them about this cause," Nicolas reasoned. "But this is all just wishful thinking anyway. First you wanted the land tax. Now you're throwing clergymen out of their rectories. Do you see where this is going? There is no other end to this road. But at least we seem to be delaying it for as long as possible, if we keep meeting and printing pamphlets at each other."

Deneau looked at him for a few seconds, his lips in a thin line, while Nicolas puffed on the pipe leisurely.

"Will you come or no?" Deneau finally asked.

Nicolas shrugged. "Fine," he said, much to Eleni's alarm. "Talk to me later. Only after dark. After a show, perhaps."

"That's good!" Deneau exclaimed with a smile, reaching across the table and clapping a hand on his shoulder. Nicolas said nothing, but Eleni saw him stiffen and his nostrils flare at the smell of human blood and vein so close to his fangs. 

"I'm bored. Let's go somewhere else," Maurier said. "Annette's?"

"I told my wife I'd be home before dawn!" Charmoud complained. 

"And so you shall, so you shall!" Altier exclaimed happily, tugging Nicolas standing by his coat. "Madame proprietress, send the bill to Renaud's, Nicolas de Lenfent."

"Germaine!" Nicolas gasped, too surprised to stop them from leading him out of the coffeehouse and down the street. He was crushed in a circle of mortal bodies, familiar faces, and he was confused whether he was still a student or at Renaud's with Lestat or a demonic violinist, and his feet stumbled as he let them pull him along the street. Eleni saw his bewilderment, but it did not edge on panic and she was too curious besides, hungry for more information he would not share.

"I'll send some money to help cover the expenses," Tellrand said as the door banged behind them in the distance and Deneau ran after them, holding Nicki's forgotten hat. 

"You always had more money than sense," Boris grunted. 

"How do you think I've stayed in school for so long?" Tellrand laughed. 

"Where are we going?" Nicolas asked, for the night was cool and he was getting his bearings back. "Who is Annette?"

"Your cousin might wish to wait outside," Deneau said soberly, having offered Eleni his arm. They were hurrying down the streets to a less active part of town, Maurier with a firm hold on the back of Nicki's jacket still. 

"I should get her home--" Nicolas began to say. 

"Just because she's your cousin, she doesn't get to stay out as late as the other actresses?" Boris asked skeptically. 

"We're here anyway," Altier announced as they came up to an unremarkable door and gave it a sequence of knocks. It opened to reveal a dark green heavy curtain, drawn aside by a dark haired, dark eyed woman with dusky skin. "Annette, my love, I come with a long lost brother and some friends. Is there succor for us tonight?"

The mortal woman looked over them with a smile and stepped back to let them in, stopping Nicolas in the hall to inspect him. 

"The others I have met, M'sieur Pascal. This young gentleman, I have not had the pleasure," she said, running hot mortal fingers around the shell of his ear and stroking his smallish lips with her thumb, making him shiver. "Not this mademoiselle."

"An old friend, a prodigal brother in arms, and his cousin," Pascal du Maurier answered. "Might I introduce Nicolas de Lenfent and Eleni du Louvois?"

"Delighted," she murmured against his lips, barely brushing against his in a kiss. He backed away, skittish, but not wanting to appear impolite, gave a slight bow. Eleni did the same, but the mortal woman did not fail to have an alluring effect upon her either, and she kept eye contact as Annette kissed the back of her proffered hand. 

"What is this place?" Nicolas hissed at Altier, but as they followed Annette and Eleni, who were hand in hand, the smell of incense and smoke was all too familiar. Opium. 

She settled them in an interior tent of rich rugs and shabby curtains, plush pillows edged with tassels, and had two serving girls bring over the necessary instruments. They were twins, dressed identically in green, and with their blonde hair entwined with leaves and flowers, looked like dryads of the wood. 

"Now then, is this your first time in such a place, Mademoiselle?" Annette asked Eleni, who nodded and eyed Nicolas curiously. The fledgling seemed lost, and he did not rise from where Maurier had pushed him gently into the cushions, instead looking around at the colors and the smoke wildly, never focusing or stopping on one thing. His hands clenched the pillows tightly, on and off, and it seemed that he dared not turn his head. They had pulled off his coat and tumbled down around him, warm mortal bodies pressing in everywhere against him. In his white shirt and waistcoat he looked a little like a fallen youth, such as he was. Was he feeling now, why they had found him so alluring, the soft yielding mortal skin, the pulsing blood beneath? She wanted to go to him, to comfort his panic and his lost look. And yet, this dark eyed girl before Eleni was so enchanting! She wanted to walk with her, find out about her mortal life, know her. 

"What are we supposed to do?" Eleni asked with a smile, reaching up to caress Annette's neck. Charmoud and Deneau watched the two women hungrily as they leaned towards each other, and Annette took a draught of the opium from the pipe, stretching as she released a gentle stream of smoke. Dizzy with desire at the sight, Eleni waved away the proffered pipe, deferring it to Maurier, as she studied Annette's dilated eyes and the gradual upward curve of her lips as she sighed. With a gentle shift, she brushed her lips against her temple where her hair met her skin, then moved downwards, an arm around her waist to draw her close. She could feel Charmoud and Deneau's eyes on them, and still she bent and, under the pretense of planting smothering kisses on her neck, took the little drink from Annette's neck. The raven haired girl gave the softest of groans, high pitched and full of pleasure, and Eleni felt the pitch and swirl of the gypsy camps she had fled and the heritage she refused but could not wash away from her skin, and then the roil and jangle of the serene opium scales coiling through her mind, settling. She healed the tiny bites with a scrape of her tongue, and lay back on the divan they shared, letting the opium-laden blood smooth out her senses.

"Come on, Lenfent, don't tell me you've sworn off everything. Ladies, ma cherie, won't you remind our friend what he is missing? I know he does not mean to insult," she heard Altier saying from far away. But she had her head resting on Annette's bosom, her strong little heart beating beneath her face, and Deneau was passing the hookah back to Annette and Eleni stole another kiss and more blood from her breast, tidy and neat and producing nothing more than a sigh of pleasure and groans of arousal from Charmoud and Deneau, the voyeurs. 

"I don't need anything," Nicolas was saying. The soft chenille of the pillows was scraping against his hands again, and he struggled to breathe, pressing his lips together tightly to force air through his nose, as if to help him focus. The girls, the bags of flesh and bone and blood and vitreous humors, tumbling down down on top of him, one hot burning hand scorching his cheek like a red poker, and he flinched and gasped and that hurt his skin, to feel the cloth shifting through and against, so much friction. Their breathing was loud and moist against him, and as Altier fondled the other sister, her twin straddled Nicolas like an iron maiden, inescapably soft and suffocating. His fingers couldn't untangle from the pillows and he could smell the blood about to gush out of her all over him. 

"Mon Dieu," he breathed, and squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to sob when the girl leaned down to kiss him, her hot worm lips squirming against his cold skin, traveling down his neck and accompanying her spidery fingers as they undid his cravat, and still he couldn't breathe, she kept thinking why didn't he find her attractive and when was her sister going to get money out of the Altier boy and what the hell was Boris here for if he wasn't going to take any opium and it was just like papa when he swore off the bottle only he would go to the pub just the same and stare and stare hungrily at the glasses and she couldn't believe how beautiful this boy was beneath her with his big eyes and his arched eyebrows and his kissable mouth and pointed chin, but what was wrong with him? 

"Is M'sieur shy?" she giggled, and it was as if raucous laughter jangled all around him, pursuing him, and he shuddered and shook his head, but there was no clearing the sounds. He was panting shallowly, trying to get himself under control, but finally he flung her off him, making her crash to the floor. He was upsetting everything, the noises, the click of their tongues against their teeth and the drumming of the water pipe and the bubbling in the hookah and the screaming slashes of the tassels in the pillows threatening to whip him to death. 

"The hell?" Altier demanded, catching the girl as she fell. "Lenfent, what's wrong with you?"

Nicolas looked wildly about him. The curtains were closing in, and his fellows, their papery skin cracking in the air, were gnashing their lips and teeth at him. Below his feet the dead tree grain blossomed into cords of iron and dead sheep staring at him. He turned, looking for an exit, and saw Eleni glowing, a pale white doll amidst these monstrous pink and brown and yellow lurching bags of flesh and bone. Suddenly white hot jaws bit into his wrist and he cried our in fear and pain, too much, too much. 

"Lenfent, are you having a bad trip? Look at me?"

"Can't be. I didn't see him take anything sir!"

"Nick?"

"Let go of me!" He gasped, their voices thunderous and shrieking, and their thoughts howled in his head, blisteringly fast. 

All of them what was the boy doing when was Altier going to give them the money he borrowed why was Selene so sweet on him anyway whoever heard of a whore lending out money he ought to ask her to get groceries Juliette always forgot to get the tomatoes and why not they could afford the bananas what about that one time when he'd watched Lenfent undress when he pretended to be asleep and Marie had slipped in and of course he was a manly man and this opium was pretty good tonight but damnit he wanted more blood to be spilt and yet not spilt glowing with Lenfent at his side hand in hand on the mountaintop of bodies and flags rising in spirit and rising ever rising forget the law look at Lenfent he'd done all right and my god Gabrielle could manage just fine but when Didier had finished his years at the lycee what was Maurier going to do and where was he going to send him he couldn't be an apprentice he'd married into some count's family and Eleni was head over heels and tumbling hard into Annette's arms and lips and blood and her whole history was awash before her with this dark alluring woman pale alluring woman two alluring women intertwined while Boris watched and how tiring it was to be Russian pretending to be French pretending to be an uncouth Russian as if they weren't already establishing Cyrillic from the ancient Greeks that were taught so well hadn't Charmoud gotten top marks in Greek was Boris thinking about that already when all Charmoud wanted was to go home now to Marionne and go to bed with her soft smells and the children's hair splayed against the pillows as he kissed them good night he hadn't wanted to do this but stupid Altier had wanted to go out and then they'd found Lenfent without his weird aristocratic friend or lover if Deneau could be believed but they never did know because the bastard left and Lenfent was always a little weird and sharp and ironic after and he drove them all away with the drinking and the anger and the weird talk of how they married into aristocratic families for the titles just as the revolution was coming but it wasn't any of Tellrand's business because all he wanted now was to finish his classes and get himself a nice bouncing girl like the one Altier had on his lap but it never changed and Mercipol was snidely starting to suggest bribing his way into a good mark and Tellrand could swear he saw grey hairs from all the stress when Lenfent looked as young as ever, the bastard, almost too young when all the rest of them had hardened and squared off and thinned and filled in all the right places when he still looked like a boy some elfin fiddler with sharp eyebrows and sharp eyes and sharp tongue good for nothing when Tellrand had none of those and felt older every day why the hell had Lenfent stood up what the hell was Lenfent doing had he gone mad poor fellow never quite the same want to save him want to help him want to grab the girls grab the opium grab the cousin go back go back go back those golden past moments when they partied innocently before he'd found the violin it was all just Lenfent tonight wasn't it?

He burst through the wall, no, it moved, it was a wall of wood, a door, and staggered against the stone wall of the building opposite. The stones cut him and he bit his lip, trying not to cry out as the air scraped against his skin. It was happening again, like last time! All the sounds and thoughts and feelings were going to come flooding in. Everything! He gave a groan, feeling his vocal chords vibrating, and fell to his knees, barely staying upright. 

Soft steps sounded, intentional and different from the confusion of trampling in the other rooms he had left, the sound of a heel tapping and sliding very smoothly over a cobble. It cut through all the noises and he opened his eyes weakly, only to freeze in terror at the sight of Armand before him, looking at him in equal measures of curiosity and concern.

And yet he was a stillness, a sanctuary in this whirlwind of sensation, a hope. Nicolas brought his hands away from his ears but replaced them once more, unable to bear the feeling of thoughts coming into his head, confusing him, twisting against his mind while beneath his knees his bones ground against themselves and into the stone through the threads that traveled and tangled up through his skin and up his arms, pulling him down and down and down. The world was spinning and Armand was still coming closer and his mouth was moving and Nicolas closed his eyes. There was nothing he could do now, no words he could put forth, and to his shame he thought he might have whimpered, the heaviness crushing him.

And cold, hard arms were wrapping around him, enclosing his shoulders, and he was being held in a vise, but it was no use, nothing more than suffocating cloth and bone and dead dead skin and flesh all around, with silken strands tickling his nose and filling his mouth with dread and coffin dirt. He panicked, kicking and shoving even though he could feel the flesh in his skin pounding against his bones and his fingers slipping against the painful delicate black silk brocade of the sleeves, slicing at the hills and valleys of his throbbing fingerprints. 

"Don't, don't, don't," he tried to whisper, relieved when he was released, only to have hard hands grab his shoulders and hold him in place. He opened his eyes. Armand was crouched, peering at him in the dark dimness of the street, clear crystal orbs floating in the pale mask of his face. There was a fading bruise on that perfect cheek and Nicolas reached out to touch it in wonder even as it disappeared. Had he done that?

"Nicki? Nicki?" Eleni was calling for him, but something was in her voice, full of smoke and slowness and pulling him in. He twitched, and backed away, only to stifle a cry when his hands scraped against the stone. Too bright, too hard, too much. He was going to sink back into the wall and be crushed and suffocated, and people would pass by and remark what an unusual rock formation they had quarried this piece of building from. A faint bark of laughter escaped him at this thought, and he almost coughed up a lung at the exhalation of air that accompanied this, pulling and pushing across his throat.

"What is the meaning of this?" Armand was asking.

"What are you doing here?"

"I keep my own counsel, child. I see no explanation for why you should be here."

"Is he all right?"

"He's unresponsive. A fledgling who is overwhelmed by his senses like this cannot be allowed to roam about alone." 

Even with the opium working through her, Eleni felt a spike of panic. No, she had let it come to this, and she had let Armand discover them. If she didn't think of anything soon, Armand would have too many reasons to keep Nicolas close, imprisoned, or worse.

She faked a laugh, letting the drugs carry it to a higher register, and tumbled against the wall before sliding down beside Nicolas. The fledgling was shaking, clearly overwhelmed by his powers and senses, and a simple brush against his mind told her that he was taking too much in, and filtering nothing.

"I wanted to see what opium was like," she murmured, leaning her head against Nicolas' shoulder, ignoring his distress. Forgive me, Nicki. There was nothing she could do for him now but to cover for him, and hide this from Armand until they could get it under control. "I think he has had a bad dose."

Armand looked at them steadily.

"Your pupils are enlarged," he observed. "His are not. I will not believe he has taken any opium tonight."

"Oh Armand, surely you don't think I would limit our education to opium?" she asked, telling herself this was truly acting, as she slung an arm around Nicolas' neck. To her surprise, he buried his face against her shoulder and her bosom with the barest of gasps, and she embraced him tightly as if she could shut out the world.

"Hello, little boy, what are you doing here?" Boris asked from the doorway. Eleni threw a prayer of thanks to no one in particular, and tried to pull Nicolas standing. He seemed frozen in place, and despite his tiny sounds of fear and distress, she forced him to move. 

"None of your concern," Armand snapped, turning back to Eleni.

"You little brat! Don't you know that's no way to talk to your elders? I ought to give you a thrashing," said Boris, rolling back his sleeves. He cursed in Russian about Armand's parentage and a goat, and the boy seemed to have understood, stiffening and turning slightly with hateful eyes. Yes, there were some Slavic features there, weren't there? Nicolas wished he could distinguish his own thoughts, but it seemed impossible. Who knew where Armand really came from, whether the stories he told HIM had been true? All he knew was Boris' moue of distaste as he reached for Armand's collar. 

"What's going on? Is Lenfent all right?" Deneau asked, appearing in the doorway and interrupting what might have been a very bloody end for Boris. Deneau looked disheveled, but he had thrown a coat on over his unbuttoned shirt.

"His cousin's tending to him. And this little shit is amusing himself," Boris said, throwing his chin towards Armand. "Get out of here!"

"Who cares about the child?" Deneau said, pushing Boris aside and kneeling down beside Eleni and Nicolas. "Lenfent, what happened? What's changed?"

"He hasn't, not for a long time," Eleni tried to explain, putting a rather forward hand on Deneau's sleeve. "I'll take him home."

"Please, call at my office if you need any assistance, mademoiselle," Deneau said, handing her a small and simple card, but he could not keep his eyes from returning to Nicolas, panting shallowly as he stared with wide fearful eyes at some unfathomable distance. He looked so young this way. Deneau had grown, had married, but if he were honest with himself he would have confessed a willingness to fight Lestat du Valois for Nicki's companionship. He wouldn't have left him to this end, alone in despair. Artistic types. Of course. 

But now all Deneau could do was take refuge in the one role still remaining to him, the privileges and responsibilities of friendship. Lenfent never knew, could never know, would never know. Too much to risk, if Deneau was wrong about Valois and it had just been a broken heart over losing a brotherly friend, and Robert Deneau was alone with his unnatural desires. He'd spend those energies on the revolution for Patria and no more. Reliable Deneau. Passionate Deneau. Responsible Deneau. Not Deneau the romantic Greek of the buggery school. "He was one of us, after all. We sought foolishness tonight and we found it. I'll call a coach for you."

"No, that's all right. I can get one myself," Eleni said, before realizing her mistake.

"What? Absolutely not," Deneau replied with the 18th century-born reflexes of a gentleman.

"I have a coach and four waiting," Armand piped up, admirably emotionless despite the utter disregard in which the "adult" mortals held him.

"My name is Robert de Deneau. I have the pleasure of meeting?" he asked expectantly but politely, for all that Armand appeared to be a boy of no more than sixteen or seventeen. Deneau was only twenty-two, but the years seem so much more significant in youth.

"M'sieur de Lenfent's employer," Armand answered, though he did not smile at the start that Boris and Deneau gave. "Come, Eleni, I was not deceiving you with the promise of a ride home."

"And might I make acquaintance with your name, young master?" Deneau asked in a noticeably chillier tone. "We were friends with M'sieur de Lenfent at university. Do forgive us our curiosity after a long separation and your sudden but serendipitous appearance. We did not forecast our visit to his establishment."

"Armand de Romanus," Armand replied after a long stare that made Deneau look away at Nicolas, who was barely standing on his feet. He staggered against the wall and reeled backwards, held upright only by Eleni's arms as a black and elegant coach with four black horses quietly rode up to the opening of the small street. They had not heard Armand call for it.

"I'm sorry, don't, don't," Nicolas muttered blindly, as Eleni pushed and coaxed and cajoled him into the carriage. She felt a little sick and heady, to have to do all this when before she had been in Annette's arms, enjoying opium for the first time as she opened the mortal Rom's veins. But Armand could not be allowed to suspect Nicolas was any danger to the coven. That would give him a carte Blanche for anything. 

"Your timing is serendipitous then," Deneau said finally. 

"Good evening, M'sieur," was all Armand said before he leapt into the coach and slammed the door. Somehow Deneau felt as if he had just escaped with his life. 

As the coach moved, Eleni needed no acting to pretend she was just as sick as Nicki. The opium with the blood was surely meant to be savored differently. She and Nicolas clutched each other while Armand watched dispassionately from the opposite seat. 

"Were you looking for us?" Eleni asked, and smoothed back Nicki's hair when he started fussing at the sound of her voice. His eyes were squeezed shut but at least he was no longer weeping. 

"M. de Lenfent is needed at rehearsal but I see he is indisposed," Armand said neutrally, eyes brushing covetously over the violinist. "The first performance of his latest play is tomorrow night."

"I don't think I can pick up my feet much less follow choreography," Eleni murmured. "How can Nicki be expected to direct?"

"No," Nicolas whispered, and his fingers clamped down around her arm in a vise with a strength that reminded her just whose bloodline he belonged to. "No."

"You protest, M'sieur?" Armand asked, ever politely.

"I'll do it. I'll do it," he whispered through clenched fangs, and when was opened his eyes she could see the pain and panic writ clear in his face. 

"That does not appear to be possible," Armand said steadily, and narrowed his eyes when Nicolas made a rude gesture, more for lack of words than any strength of feeling. 

"Give me a moment to set him to rights. The mortal orchestra is assembled, are they not?" Eleni asked Armand as she helped Nicolas out of the coach. 

"I'm fine!" Nicolas all but shouted, pushing her away and staggering to the side door. He had left his coat back at the opium house, and his white shirt was drenched in blood sweat. He couldn't hear himself over the voices but the music in the ink was calling to him, he could feel it needling into his mind and stabbing through his veins and wrists and arms and out through his fingers. He had to get to his desk. He dropped his keys, cursed, fumbled again, and fell through the door. 

"Nicki, please! Let me help--" Eleni said, but even she was dizzy as the opium wore on and off. She stayed close to Nicolas and shut the door to his dressing room as soon as the both of them were inside.

Instantly, Nicolas dropped into a crouch, hands over his head. He was trying to make himself as small as possible, and Eleni was having a hard time focusing on him. She would have to think on this later. 

"Make it stop!" he begged her as he rocked back and forth. "It hurts, it has to get out! Make it stop!"

"Nicki! Nicki listen to me, listen to my voice alone!" She shouted in his face, shaking him by his shoulders, desperate that Armand would not find out. "You have to shut them out! They're not really in your head, they're outside! Listen to me!"

"Eleni, 'leni, 'leni, I can hear everything! I can feel everything! Helene, why did you stay away for so long?" he asked, low and monotone and in the Greek of her childhood, exactly the way her little brother had said it. No. Nicolas couldn't be reading her mind. She kept it secret, wouldn't allow Armand to discover anything. This fledgling couldn't worm his way through what Armand couldn't even be bothered to unlock, and she wasn't broadcasting. Was she?

Unless...she had told herself it had been a coincidence, the shared name. But she didn't want to think of the other possibilities, second lives, restless ghosts. 

"Niko?" she asked fearfully, knowing she might be encouraging a delusion, half-hopeful she was talking to the long dead spirit of her little brother.

"I don't want to see! Stop it make it stop!" He gasped. And suddenly, she understood. It was as if the floodgates had opened, and the entire world tried to push in, objects that shouldn't have thoughts screamed their histories at her and she got glimpses and half-formed words for Arthur's thoughts and Eugenie's memories and Felix's obsessions and even faint balalaika music from Armand, and frantically she shoved herself away from Nicolas 

"Stop, please, stop, Nicki, I don't want to see," she whispered weakly, but she could feel the small particles of air and dust striking his skin and the scrape of the linen and silk on his shirt and the shift and groan of bone within his muscles and the light beams broke up into shafts of fire that seared and how could he walk around like this was this all the time all the time "Stop it! Nicki, I don't want to see any more!" She screamed at him, shaking him so hard his eyes opened and his head was flung back and forth in a cloud of brown tangled curls. She slapped him, terrified. "I don't want to understand!"

Abruptly, it cut off, and she released him, letting him fall to his side onto the floor. She supported herself with her hands where she knelt, panting, feeling her fear dissolve and her guilt settle in. His hair covered his face and she could not see his expression. 

She reached for him, only to see him twitch away from her and stumble to his hands and knees to start crawling to his desk. She couldn't read his expression from here, but he wasn't even crying. She'd abandoned him again. Worse. She'd rejected him. He'd shared himself or let her in, she couldn't tell which, but she had refused and cast him out. What would it take now, how long would it take, for her to regain his trust? Did he even understand what had happened?

"I'm sorry--" she rasped out, reaching for him again as she got to her feet, but he gritted his teeth and put one hand out to stop her, the other to his temple as if he could squeeze out the sound. 

"You still hear it, don't you? Is it like that all the time?" she whispered, stricken with the realization. He looked at her for longer than she was comfortable, gaze unreadable, and she glanced away, pretending she had intended to take a fresh shirt from his armoire. 

"Enough of the time," he said, not looking at her as she reached for him and removed his sodden shirt, then wiped his skin with a damp cloth. It came away pink and he shivered. 

"I don't know how you bear it, Nicki. I'm sorry," she said. "You'll learn to block it out with time, to focus your powers and energies. I promise."

"Everything or nothing," Nicolas told her at last, as she tucked in his shirt and began to brush his hair. Then, to her surprise, he smiled. "You never thought it'd come to this, did you?"

"I'm sorry, Nicki, I am! But now we must grow and change! We are a coven together now," Eleni entreated. 

"This is what I have to look forward to," he told her. "This is all I have to work with."

"It doesn't have to be that way. You and I, we could, we could live another life," she whispered, eyes widening so that he understood. "But keep it close to you. And me. The others, they don't think this way."

"He'd never let us," Nicolas whispered. "And I have such grand schemes to write down still!" He lurched away from her, snatching up a pen, jarring the desk with the force of how he slammed against the edge, and now she knew he transcribed what his mind could make and blend and inspire from the maelstrom that filtered through him. He did the best he could with what he had, and it astounded her that he was as coherent as he was. As she watched him continue to scribble, that incessant hum rising in the back of his throat again, perhaps to drown out everything else, she realized this was yet another thing to keep secret and safe from Armand, but for how long while the coven master attended these frenetic sessions without Nicolas even noticing? In the riot of sensations it was hard for him to even distinguish was were his own thoughts and actions and feelings, let alone pick out whether Armand was quietly observing his every move. She would have to come up with something, and soon. 

"You have rehearsal," F√©lix said through the door, rapping sharply on the wood. Nicolas rushed past Eleni, his occasionally sudden brusqueness now explained, for who could tell whether she was really there or not? 

"Yes? Oh. Yes. I'm coming," Nicolas said distractedly, as if surprised to see Felix there. He grabbed his violin and followed his bodyguard out. 

So to add to the list, if he wasn't reliving Les Innocents, he was completely overwhelmed by his powers. It explained much of his erratic behavior, if he operated much of the time in a world where he could not trust what he heard and everything he did produced oversensitized agony. 

She made her way, still unsteadily, to the stage door so she could hear the rehearsal. Nicolas was greeting them in polite tones, F√©lix had told them he had a fever and they were entreating him to rest. He leaned against the stage and then, looking at all of them, brought his violin to his shoulder. The violinists followed suit, but he shook his head, and placed his bow on the strings. 

It seemed he had hardly moved, or had always been moving, the drawing of the note across the strings, that first liquid sound was so smooth and steady it felt eternal. It was as if it had been in their thoughts all this time and they had been deaf to it until now. 

Eleni brought her hands to her mouth as Nicolas played, tears spilling down her cheeks. How could he? To have the world slicing and chopping through him, and to have this beauty pour out from his instrument and his mind? The order they had wrecked, it was still a kind of sieve. 

She supposed the violin was a comfort. It was overwhelming, the unwavering steady rise and fall of notes no matter what he played, resonating in his ear. The sorrow and serenity of his current piece was making some of the mortal musicians reach for their handkerchiefs. 

And such loneliness, too. There was only this solitude and sorrow for companionship, and the notes wrapped themselves around them and brought each listener close. Suddenly the melody pitched, making Eleni nauseous somehow, and it dove into an angered frenzy of catastrophic notes, staccato replacing glissando and sharp achromatic keys smashing through the placid resignation of the minor key from before. If there was no happiness but that which presaged betrayal, no love that was not built upon fragile lies, then this was better, this violent anger, this eternal struggle. 

It tossed Nicolas backwards, but she caught his eye and realized the panic was draining out of him now that the music had him in its safe embrace, as cruel a mistress as it was. She sat down as the melody faded and passed, and with some relief Nicolas put down his violin and caught his breath.

Then something happened that had never happened before. Their newest actor, Adam Brooksmith, a dark-haired blue-eyed American from New York, stood up from where he waited and applauded. The rest of them stared, but hesitantly, one by one, began to join in the applause.

Nicolas glared up on stage at first, then stared as the applause surrounded him. He turned wildly, as if surrounded by threats, and snatched the nearest cello and smashed it against the stage. The applause stopped instantly, some of the women screaming and standing as if to flee, but uncertain where to go.

Nicolas stared down at the broken cello, chest heaving with excitement and anger, and no one dared disturb him.

"My boy," Francois Abbaye said gently, going down on one knee and maneuvering his bulk off the stage.

"It's nothing!" Nicolas snapped angrily, hands tight fists, his entire figure wound tight. But there were tears in his voice and he wouldn't look at Abbaye. Couldn't they see?

Franz Krulper, their newest flautist and an immortal from Austria, sniffed and tried to calm the women, who clutched their instruments closely and protectively. "Nothing to worry about, you know how excitable he is!" He did not like Lenfent, but the music was the music and he could not miss the chance to join this endeavor. 

He had been voted in on Armand's wishes alone, for Felix did not trust him, Laurent liked him but was terribly jealous of the way he clicked his heels neatly, and Eleni and Eugenie were indifferent. What was another vampire? They had five now, the violinists Pierre Sepelier and Josephine Trudeau, turned soon after they joined, to Nicolas' delight. They held the same respect and feel for the music that he did, and he was gratified to have allies in his artistic arguments, as much as he would deny it. There was also Arthur Montrose, who had joined them from London. Delphine de Peygnac, another actress, came to them from Marseilles one night, and impressed them with her dancing. Nicolas particularly liked her dancing, and as a result pressed her even harder for it. Hugo de Troisemier was about completing his probation period, as was Marie Reynard. Adam Brooksmith did not know if he would stay. 

"No, don't!" Arthur Montrose warned, as Abbaye moved closer to Nicolas. No one was supposed to touch Nicolas, especially not when he was upset. That privilege and chore fell to the original founders alone, to Felix and Eleni, to Laurent and Eugenie, and the rarely-sighted Armand.

"It's all right," Abbaye said softly, holding out his hand. "We didn't mean to mock you. I know it wasn't that kind of a performance. The music is always sublime, Maestro, it moves us all, it waxes physical."

Nicolas was no longer trembling with tension and anger, but he had frozen instead, and his eyes flicked to Abbaye. "Physical?"

"Yes, your music is strong and beautiful, my boy," Abbaye said encouragingly, and put a warm mortal arm around Nicolas' shoulders, reassuring and firm. "I know it brings you distress, and we do not want you to suffer, but to hear it brings us joy."

"Oh," Nicolas said, feeling stupid. "I don't like it, when you, when you, it isn't good. It's not good, there's nothing good about it. It's just evil and pain and darkness-"

"Shh, shh, you're safe here. And it's so much more than that. Won't you show us? Won't you direct? We have our new show tomorrow," Abbaye said. "Hugo can get a new cello."

"What?!" Hugo declared indignantly, but Arthur shushed him and sent Marie to fetch a spare violoncello.

"I am still dancing like a hippo, aren't I?" Abbaye asked with humor in his voice, as he took his arm off Nicolas' shoulders, seeing the young man straighten. "It's just your nerves, we're all waiting on your every command. So direct us, maestro. Come on, now!" He said the last with some firmness, not quite a command and not quite a request.

"Oui, oui," Nicolas muttered, straightening his clothes with quick gestures and shoving back his hair. "Let us begin."

They knew, after that, and warned every new theatre member thereafter, never to praise Nicolas' work, never to applaud. The excitement of what he thought was their pleasure at what they didn't recognize was the darkness and evil that had captured him was too much for his nerves to tolerate.

Franz Krulper never forgot the incident, however. His own audition had been quite simple, and he tolerated Nicolas only because the fledgling amused him with his interesting stories and music. 

He had knocked on the back door without fanfare, flute case in hand, traveling valise beside him. 

"Yes?" asked a young man with striking silver hair, eyes sweeping over his dark navy blue frock coat with red cuffs and down at the flute case. It set off his dark coppery brown hair nicely, he knew. 

Franz clicked his heels, taking note of the small intake of breath the youth tried to hide, and gave a rigid bow. 

"I have come to audition for membership as one of your brethren. My skills with the flute are prodigious and I hear you do not have anyone permanent," he said.

"You've come a long way just to play the flute," the youth remarked, and Franz remained silent. "Have you traveled far?"

"I left Vienna early last week," Franz replied. "And we all must find a way to occupy our time."

"Welcome. Occupy yourself with us for the moment," said a voice beyond the door, and the youth turned and allowed Franz to see a boy of stunning, luminous beauty. He had dark russet hair that he tied back very neatly, and though he dressed formally in somber black, his long fingers wore several rings, and he was holding a hat with a lavish cockade and a black feather in it. 

Franz bowed, feeling the solid mental wall before him and the power of an elder, even in one who looked so young, freshly into the bloom of life. 

"What is your name?" asked the beautiful elder. 

"Franz Krulper," he answered dutifully, and he could feel the vampire reading him from his very tone. How old must he be? What power! There was no way to block him out. It had been but a few decades since he was made.

"You may call me Armand. This is Laurent de ___," said the boy. "He carries out much of the operations and procurement, and assists our primary manager."

"Honored," Franz said dutifully. 

"You have good timing," Laurent said. "They are almost done with rehearsal. Maybe it will be good for you to try playing with them when they are done."

"At your pleasure," Franz replied, but his eyes met Armand's and he smiled. There was promise there, and though nothing in the coven master's face betrayed his expression, Franz suspected he did not personally lead many candidates himself, from the slight bow and look Laurent gave them. He winked at the silver-haired lieutenant, but the youth narrowed his eyes and turned away. Interesting. 

They passed through the warren of small wooden hallways before coming to the stage door and stepping out to backstage. The theatre was in dusk, the orchestral area very well-lit, the stage lights set, but the audience seats and backstage were enshrouded in murky shadow, just the barest of forms waiting. 

A young man, almost a student, with fine, boyish features and very curly dark hair, though it was brushed and tied back tightly, was standing on a little wooden box, surrounded by the musicians in a curious depression before the stage. Franz had heard of these, these pits, but he had not seen many used. 

A few actors clustered on one side of the stage, and three dancers were in the center, dressed in simple linen shifts tied around the middle with golden rope. 

The young man's finely made hands held nothing, and he wore a loose white shirt and a pale yellow waistcoat. His white cravat was conservative and tightly wound around his neck and kept close, and his light breeches and ivory stockings cut a very slim and trim figure. There was, curiously, a dark crimson silk handkerchief poking like a wound out of the cuff of his left sleeve.

He was a vampire. More than half of them were, and a few were very new, especially the two violinists whose eyes were glued to their conductor with the devotion of fellow supplicants at a shrine. 

"Mademoiselle de Peygnac, do they have a different sense of gravity in Marseilles?" The young director was asking as Armand silently shut the door behind them to watch. "There is no need to stomp the ground to make sure you will land, really, nor to lurch like a drunken ostrich every time M'sieur du Croisy takes a swipe at you. It's called acting, do you remember? Where you make things up on stage and only pretend the story happened to you?"

"I'm not an idiot!" Delphine de Peygnac bit her lip and put her hands on her hips. Franz suddenly realized she was a vampire too, and much older than the director with the abusive words. "It's just, I've never done this kind of acting before!"

"Well last week Mlle Trudeau had never executed the music you're tripping on and yet now we are all waiting for you to get it right! What is the point of physical perfection if you're going to waste it on telling yourself you've never done the perfect before?!" 

"I'm not--"

"Eleni has better things to do tonight so unfortunately it appears to fall to me to correct you. Lean into his blow, he won't carry the force his speed suggests, and use that to push off into your spin. And stop looking like an ostrich when you do it," the young man replied quickly, raising his arms to the orchestra.

Before Franz could even take a breath the music started, and the choreography was unlike anything he had seen. Unlike the pantomime of the other theatre houses of Europe, of exaggerated gestures to make sure the audience could do the equivalent of reading out loud while following their finger along the lines, the dance and actions seemed real, which only made their content all the more alarming. du Croisy struck de Peygnac across the side with an enormous sledgehammer, the speed of it making Franz gasp despite himself. Blink and you could miss it. Fail to look carefully and you would believe it, not see how the fair lady leaned into the blow like a lover as the director instructed, making even her suffering tender and feminine, before her feet pirouetted and she spun in the air, lifting herself slightly and making the mortal members gasp despite themselves. du Croisy feigned amazement and thwarted mischief, and raised his hammer again, then stopped. 

"What the hell?!" The conductor yelled, not at du Croisy as Franz expected but at his own orchestra. 

"There was no cue," du Croisy protested, thinking he was being chastised. 

"Not you, Hugo du Troisemier missed two entire measures, in a daring commentary on the relevance of the violoncello in contemporary orchestral accompaniments," the director said scathingly. "What did you think this meant?" He repeated a gesture he'd made earlier, meant to cue the cellist. 

"There's so much going on it's hard to tell sometimes, Maestro!" someone on the English horn protested. It was a tiny orchestra. 

"Isn't that what practice is for? Oh, my apologies, you're all perfectly formed musicians!" The director replied. This provoked a flurry of protests and shouts.

"There is no call for that, petit Monsieur!"

"Not my fault I can't always understand your music!"

"There's no continuo!"

"How am I supposed to expect what's next if there's no melody?"

"Are you musicians or not?" the director shouted back. 

"This isn't the kind of music we know! I want to know when I should wait for a cue! Otherwise I have no idea--this doesn't follow any of the rules of music. How am I to know when to play?" Hugo protested. 

The director put down his arms, raised all this time in angry gestures, and stared at Hugo steadily. He hopped off the box airily, and ignored everything else as he made his way to the musician's seat. 

"Do you require spectacles, M'sieur?" he asked in tones of surprising patience and gentlemanly politeness. His hands were clasped solicitously behind his back as he bent forward with his question. 

"No?" Hugo said warily, and Franz could not understand why these older vampires gave this fledgling such quarter, saw him with such apprehension. 

"So you must have forgotten how to read, is that it?" The director asked. "You are a talented cellist, we know you can execute this, so it must be the score, n'cest-ce pas?"

"I can read!" Hugo protested. "I learned last month but I learned!"

"After great goading, lying, and protest," the director muttered under his breath. "Then what is this?" He snatched the papers and stuck them under Hugo's nose, one fine finger stabbing into the sheet. 

"Wait for cue?" Hugo said hesitantly, and Franz could hear the dread building in his stomach. 

"So what kind of cue do I give, M'sieur?" asked the young man, flinging the papers at the unfortunate musician. "If you can't even be bothered to pay goddamned attention!"

"So I ignore the words sometimes. I'm not in the habit!" Hugo protested weakly. 

"Just for you, next time, you can draw little stars and circles. Maybe the next orchestra to hire you can have the copyist add tiny people waving, too," the director said nastily, before straightening and looking up at the stage. "My apologies, that'll be all for tonight, merci, Madames et Messieurs." He even bowed formally, and the actors and actresses returned their thanks, looking relieved to be released. 

"So that's it?" Hugo asked over the bustle of the actors gathering their things. "I'm, I'm to leave?"

The director looked at him quizzically, then waved a dismissive hand. "No, of course not. You are the best cellist I've ever heard, you just can't be bothered to actually be one."

"I suppose, I suppose that's all right," Hugo said slowly, looking down at his pages with some relief. 

"And you care about the music, if not the words," the director mused, looking at him thoughtfully. "Perhaps we can invent some new notation after all. It won't be stars, but it will be more efficient."

"If I can offer any assistance - -" Hugo began. 

"Yes, yes, you'll be the first to test it," the director said. "When we have others, no doubt we will have this problem."

"This would be a good time to introduce Herr Franz Krulper," Armand piped up beside him, and with an impressive mental gesture, nudged him silently into the light on the stage. 

"Herr?" the young man's lips seemed to form silently, frowning, but he turned around to face the stage and the orchestra because Armand had spoken, and when the coven master spoke, everyone listened. 

"At your service," Franz said, bowing and clicking his heels.

"Herr Krulper is recently of Vienna," Armand said, approaching the orchestra not from the stage but from the theatre floor, so that he stood above the orchestra and director, but so that Franz was still on display on stage. "The coven there celebrates musical talent and Herr Krulper is their best flautist, and can work with the piccolo as well, naturally. If you could audition him tonight with the orchestra, we can quickly see how to fit him in." Franz hid his surprise at the choice of words. Was it decided already? Armand hadn't said to see if he fit, but rather how to fit him. 

The director did not seem to miss the implication either, because he narrowed his eyes and nodded curtly. 

"If he fits," he said. He rummaged in a box of papers and pulled out one for Franz. "If everyone can turn to 57, page 6."

The ruffling of pages was instant, and those who had nearly left scurried back to their seats. His command of his orchestra was perfect, and Franz gratefully accepted the paper and the music stand that came with it. 

"This was supposed to have a flautist but we didn't have one," the director explained. 

"But you wrote it anyway?" Franz asked in surprise.

"Well, yes, it is meant to have it. It works without it but," the director shrugged helplessly. "That is what the piece is. How could I not write it?" He seemed to find the idea unsettling, because he walked quickly back to his stand and raise his hands for attention. "Do you have sufficient time to acquaint yourself? We can go half time the first play, but I would expect full speed on the second and third."

Franz scanned the sheet, surprised by the complexity of the piece. It was not a simple melody of a few voices interweaving and balancing. This bucked the traditions of composition, and he could not tell exactly how it would sound until it would be played. But he could do it. 

"I'm ready. No need to slow down."

The director nodded, bowed very formally, almost in an exaggerated fashion, to the coven master who had taken a seat in the audience with folded hands and polite expression, and turned back. 

It was like nothing Franz had heard before. Immediately, he thought he didn't understand it, that it wouldn't sell, but a flight of energy and purity floated through it and grew until violins did not sound like violins and the flute was leading the powerful gust of voices, not distinct but all harmonizing into one, with meaning only when heard together. It ended too quickly, leaving Franz wanting for the next page, wanting to see what else he could make the flute and the instruments do. The spectacle of all this in a theatre must explain the lines that stretched out down the street. 

The young music director was looking at him with a steady and calculating gaze, and Franz felt himself strangely weighed and peeled by this fledgling, though he was certain he was not permitting any mental intrusion. And certainly, this one was too young, too mortal, to attempt such feats. Surely. 

"It appears obvious," Armand said calmly, startling the young director and making him turn around. Suddenly Franz felt less penetrated, less absorbed and pulled, and he had to wonder at his doubt. 

"There is precious little reason to admit solely on the novelties of technical merit," the director said carefully, so different from his excitable demeanor of earlier. The implication was clear. Franz was technically qualified, but something else was lacking. And vampires were expert at mimicry besides. Only those immortal musicians could draw music through themselves regardless of the instrument, and make the listener sing instead. 

"Our selections are always warranted. Our members have their own talents particular to our needs beyond merely those of the orchestra," Armand said calmly, referring to the coven before a half-mortal audience. "I would not want to tax your nerves by asking you to imagine what Herr Krulper's would be."

"M'sieur," the fledgling said testily, like a warning, to Franz's surprise. Laurent had referred to Armand by his first name, and the coven master had asked to be referred to as such. What created such formal barriers between the coven's livelihood and its master?

"It would appear this audition is finished," Armand said lightly as he stood. "Herr Krulper, or Franz, if I may, you can move your things in later in the week."

The director stiffened with barely controlled anger, and let out a very short huff. With the orchestra's eyes glued to him, he raised his hand, and said, shortly, "Dismissed. Merci. I will see you on Wednesday." It seemed the musicians could not scramble quickly enough to leave.

Armand turned and went through the stage door, and Franz cast a backward glance at the director, standing in the midst of those empty chairs with a glowering expression on his face. He hurried his pace and finally came alongside Armand. 

"I am grateful for my entry, but how am I to join if the director has not approved-" Franz asked. 

"His name is Nicolas de Lenfent," Armand said softly, as if under his breath. His eyes were half-lidded but he slowed his pace for Franz. They were climbing, up and up, and Franz followed him in silence through the dark upper floors, the storage rooms of paints and scrims and costumes and barrels and candles. They arrived at another, separate set of stairs, small and narrow, and these the boy skipped up effortlessly, muscles beneath calves beneath fine silk pumping, and Franz followed without thinking until the trap door opened and they were in a tiny wooden room. Armand opened the door and stepped out onto the flat top of the mansard roof, and looked back at Franz, expecting him to follow. He joined him against the railings, wind whipping around their hair, and blinked at the view of Paris from this tiny point. 

"If Maestro de Lenfent is unwilling-"

"You know the name Franziska March. Tell me what you know." It was a command, though the tone was placid, the eyes half-lidded, and the coven master did not look at him but instead out onto the city. 

Immune. He was immune to Franz's charms and threats and lies and there was nothing he could do. What had she thought him capable of?

"I don't understand. If you know, why did you have me audition and join before all their eyes?"

"So you know my offer is genuine," said the boy. "What did she tell you to say?"

"All that I have said already."

"What did she want me to think? To know?"

"I don't understand."

"Have I overestimated you?" No expression on that sublime face. 

"She wants you to think this is over. If I am discovered, I am to be the tribute to end it."

"Let us say you are not discovered."

"Sire?"

"You are not discovered. Franziska need not be concerned that one of her spymasters is compromised. She will not have to mourn you as a sacrifice and you will not have to experience your limbs being scattered in all directions. There is no need for such primitivism. I am told we are in an age of light now."

Franz could not suppress a shudder. He had no doubt who held the lamp.  
It was the way he had said it. I am told. . .dear God! As if he put aside savagery as an indulgence. 

"Am I to be a hostage, then, against my own coven?"

"Not yours anymore, Herr Krulper," Armand said to him. "As a dutiful flautist of the Theatre des Vampires de Paris, surely M'sieur will be glad to explain what these gracious letters he receives about the Viennese social scene are trying to say. And he will be only glad to take dictation, and have some of his coven master's additional letters travel with his own back to his former Viennese mistress."

"Asylum? For a double agent?"

"For someone who realized the consortium buyout of Franziska's lace competitors was not a mortal's ambition, you are trying remarkably hard to appear slow."

"You knew that was me?"

"The fire was not ruinous though it removed much of the evidence, but my investigator said the imprisonment was very like your style." The elder looked at him with those dark eyes and sighed, the first expression Franz had seen. "You are still struggling to secure your position when I have already outlined the terms."

"I just don't understand why you would let me roam free," Franz blurted out, afraid to give him ideas but knowing there was nothing he could do, knowing this creature centuries older than he would have thought of it. "Let alone not kill me for my lack of allegiance to her, or in revenge for my previous interference."

"You do not strike me as a lone wolf who remains with the losing side," Armand said, and deliberately turned his back on Franz. If there were a suicidal assassination opportunity, this was it. "We are creatures of survival, and you wish to survive. This coven cannot sustain itself on musical passion and financial acuity alone, regardless of Nicolas or Eleni's efforts. As coven master I must see to it that future threats are known or contained. You would strengthen our ranks as a full member rather than a crippled prisoner. I have other uses for you beyond a go-between for Paris and Vienna."

"You have my thanks and my service, for sparing my life," Franz said, dropping to one knee as if to swear fealty. The coven master turned around and Franz felt like he was falling, the stars rising overhead, and faintly he was aware of lips at his throat and that intimate offering of blood to the elder that sealed his entry into the coven. Armand had him now, utterly and entirely, and he felt himself weakening just before he was released. He looked up and the coven master was flushed with his blood, immaculate still but for the stain of red against his cupid's lips. 

"You have told me everything," Armand whispered, having seen it in the blood. "You will tell me more." He pushed Franz back downstairs without another word. 

As he stumbled through the halls, lightheaded, he had the odd sensation of being hunted like a small child by a monster, and when he looked back all he saw was the beautiful Botticelli face looking blankly back at him. 

Nicolas de Lenfent was waiting for them when they reached the second floor. In the darkness of these quiet unoccupied rooms he seemed to become more solid, less like a vibrating channel of musical passion, more like a small single individual. A pale candle burning fiercely in the night. 

"Nicolas," Armand said in acknowledgment, then dipped his head with an angel's smile when Nicolas folded his arms, and amended, "M'sieur de Lenfent. How can we be of service?"

"I thought you would veto members, not recruit them," the man answered, and Franz was surprised by how calm he sounded. How cold. 

"Both are my right and responsibility as coven master. Did Eleni explain this?" Armand asked, and placed the tips of his long fingers on Franz's elbow. It was as good a warning as any. 

"You must think me a complete idiot," said the young man darkly, arms folded, brooding in the dark. 

"No, just a complete fool," Armand answered lightly.

"What is he going to do for you? You've never shown an interest in the members of my orchestra before," replied Nicolas with narrowed eyes.

"Perhaps it is time I did. I do wonder how we go through so much rosin every week," Armand replied, intentionally not taking him seriously. "I keep my own counsel, M'sieur de Lenfent. You begged relief from that from the very start."

"I never begged you for anything!" Nicolas snarled, because it was true.  
"Don't you know what you're signing up for, Herr Krulper? Was Vienna not dangerous enough for you, that you had to come to this den of darkness?"

"Your music is unparalleled, M'sieur. That itself is enough," Franz said truthfully. Franziska had warned him of the coven master's guile and ruthlessness, but she had made no mention of the theatre's passionate kapellmeister and composer. If she had known of this animosity between the two sooner, she might have contacted Lenfent to spy directly on Armand. "I cannot see the danger in it."

Nicolas stared at him, and Franz once again experienced the sensation of his skin and eyelids and scalp being pulled back, of sifting through and around, as if they were already on intimate terms and he had only been closing his eyes this entire time. It was much like how the music was, eternal, liquid, flowing as if it had always been playing and the listener had only just begin to finally pay attention, to let himself fall and drown in it. Then something strange happened. He felt himself being closed out, as if metal walls were clanging and vibrating closed around him, and despite all his fine self-control and spy craft he put his hands out in the darkness and Lenfent's expression turned quizzical so it must not have been his doing, surely not, not a fledgling of his age, but Armand was glaring at the violinist and his expression was fearsome to behold, like a mask of fear and fury. He swept up against Nicolas' chest in the blink of an eye, forcing him back suddenly against the wall so they were nose to chin, and suddenly Franz felt that he could breathe again. 

"What are you trying to do?" Armand whispered, lips barely brushing the shell of Nicolas' ear. To Franz's surprise, the violinist was trembling. 

"I don't know," he confessed, frozen in place, his voice faltering. "I don't understand." He closed his eyes, turning his face to one side as if to wait for the oncoming blow. Franz found it hard to blame him- - what does anyone do against an elder of that power in such close proximity?

"Leave it," Armand said. "Krulper stays. He is your new flautist, and he plays well." He released him, and only then did Franz realize the coven master had gripped both of the composer's wrists tightly, for he rotated and rubbed them with a wince.

"Wait," Nicolas said, however, even as Armand set foot down the stairs. "If you think to build allies for your little games, M'sieur, don't do it in the orchestra or the cast, or the productions will falter. Play your games in the crew if you must, but leave the music to me."

Armand looked as if he was actually considering it for a moment, and then nodded once, before beckoning Franz with a tilt of his head, a russet brown lock of hair escaping from its immaculate ponytail. Captivated by the beauty and tempted by the power, Franz followed without even considering Lenfent, who was clearly not much of a threat beyond a fool filled with hot air and grand words and cared for nothing but his tiny reign over his tiny kingdom. 

Only shortly afterwards, when he was given the assignment of spying on this little king, did he realize how wrong he had been. The coven master was absolutely obsessed with the musician. How else to explain the nature of the questions, over such a mundane routine?

"And?"

"And he returned at once," Franz answered. As he did every night. As he had done for all the nights. Nicolas went out, fed, sometimes with Eleni or Laurent or Felix, picked up some books at a bookstore or some music from a music store, and then shut himself up in his room alone to compose or write. If he had rehearsal or a performance, Eleni went in to make sure he was visually acceptable, because apparently they thought the man incapable of dressing himself. Franz had never seen someone less vain, less attentive to his appearance, but Nicolas didn't exactly dress terribly. Or they wanted him to focus on the work. The hair, perhaps it was the hair, which Eleni brushed and tied back carefully and tightly, only to have it spring out, cascading curls limply over his shoulders, his natural part asserting itself so he looked like a girl with a ponytail. It didn't help that Eleni favored wide ribbons. 

"Did he notice you?"

"No. I was a spy before I was turned, and I became one after as well. He did not notice me. He could not have noticed me. I shield myself and layer on the thoughts of other mortals," Franz answered, because he knew Armand was about to ask how could he know. 

Armand had his back turned, but they could see each other in the newly installed wide mirror that hung above the fireplace. His face was expressionless as ever, but his mouth made the slightest moue. 

"He has been lucid for so long," Armand said softly, gazing at the fire. 

Franz knew better than to ask what he meant, though his lips burned to form the inquiry Sire. 

"Do you know where he obtained the gold pocket watch?" 

"I can find out, Sire."

"Do so. You may go."

Franz left Armand's office feeling yet again like a small cog who had no idea if he was serving the gears of a madman or a genius. 

It was a simple matter. Lenfent was put to bed by Felix usually, like a child or a prisoner, a golden goose of the theatre really, but no one guarded his door when he awoke. Franz rose early, urging his roommate Hugo to unlock their door for him (just one night of probation left), saying he had a mortal pet, and slipped into the violinist's dressing room. 

The composer was still asleep, and Franz did not bother to open his coffin to check. He snatched the gold watch and left without even passing anyone in the hall. 

He could not understand why this mattered. It was an ordinary pocket watch, gilded, yes, but no engravings beyond the maker, nothing to indicate sentimental attachment. Inquiries after the maker led him to the watchmaker, who pointed him to a seedy quarter of town by a coaching inn, where he discovered the original owner. Boris Rostoyenko. Or Rostoire, as he allowed the French to call him. 

The man was delirious, being cared for with a fever by the proprietor. Lenfent had paid her to have a serving girl bring soup and take away the waste, twice a day. He was supposed to visit tonight. He usually did every two weeks, and gave notice when he would. 

"The river, the river," Rostoire was repeating, hand blindly searching in the air. 

"He keeps the blindfold on, or else the light is too bright for him. I'll be downstairs if you need me, sire. It's just me and mama tonight, so she needs all the help she can get." The servant girl bowed and left Franz alone in the room with the invalid. 

"M'sieur?" He grasped the searching hand, and the mortal gasped. 

"Lenfent? Lenfent, is that you?" He was not old, but his voice was thin and weak, and his skin was stretched over from his illness, whatever it was. His hand was burning hot. The fever was in him. 

Franz said nothing, just squeezing his hand. 

"You are so good to me," muttered the man. "The others all said they had their own lives. They won't give their money to keep a useless peasant from the steppes, pretending to be one of them. Not even Tellrand."

Franz moved to pull away, but the mortal clung to his arm with both hands. 

"Wait! Wait, don't go," he pleaded, and with one hand began untying and unwrapping the filthy yellow cravat around his neck, revealing the gashes in his neck, scarred over and angry red. They looked about two weeks old. What had Lenfent been doing?

"Is it better?" Boris asked. 

Franz let him hear the shift in his clothing, and took a closer look. The wounds had not been made by a vampire! They were messy and jagged, but they were the clear work of a knife. He had seen Lenfent feed, and while it was occasionally untidy, it didn't look like this. 

Why didn't Lenfent just heal his friend with the Blood?

Franz looked down at the watch and ghosted across the mortal's thoughts. Syphilis. He was being driven mad by syphilis and fever. Nicolas and the servant girl were his only contacts at his sickbed, now likely his deathbed. 

He thought quickly. He wanted no more of these stupid assignments, and this mortal pet brought complications. There was no telling when Lenfent would arrive, and they had no rehearsal tonight, with nothing to impede him. 

"Lenfent? Please, Nikolai, is it better? Am I going to die?" The mortal begged, and began shoving off his blindfold. He saw the gleam of the watch before it was shoved down his throat, and had barely any time to think that this was not his schoolmate and provider- -and Russian language pupil? Interesting, Franz thought, for Lenfent to be learning Russian- -before Franz struck him with a vicious uppercut that broke all his teeth against the watch. He howled in pain, and Franz snatched the watch and tore out his vocal cords as he pulled it out of the mortal's body, the blood fountaining and spurting around the bed. With a sigh at the silence- sloppy, really, of him -he garroted the man with the watch chain, tying it like an obscene necklace around his neck. The mortal's eyes bulged as his fingers gouged his mangled neck, trying to loosen it as his face turned blue. Filthy linens-Lenfent was not getting his money's worth with the care-flew as the mortal kicked, and Franz gripped both his legs and twisted, breaking his back.

Footsteps sounded on the landing, precisely what he had been waiting for. 

"Cherie, I need help. Bring fresh linens. He is in pain!" Franz called through the door, aware he must have looked like a handsome young officer, perhaps willing to go on a walk with her later. 

When the servant girl returned, he clamped a hand over her neck to strangle her scream at the sight of the corpse dribbling its fluids onto the bed, then tore apart her clothes to get to her chest. He quickly sank his fangs into her breast against the back of the door, feeding until she stopped struggling. With the blood coursing through him, steaming from his mouth, he almost felt like howling in glee. With simple twists he dismembered her and scattered her limbs on the floor before tying up her torso with the linens and hanging them from the ceiling lamp. Blood drenched his muzzle and his chest, and his hands and cuffs were dripping red. He stood in the doorway and looked back at the room. There was a huge spray of blood on the floor before the door and another around the bed, where the unfortunate Russian was already dead. The girl's headless limbless torso was hung in a macabre fashion above like a decoration, and he hung her hands and legs in other niches and on chairs. Her head he left on the floor where it had fallen. 

Good enough. He left the room and went to the next, and the next, leaving footsteps and sometimes small streams of blood in the floorboards as he dispatched the guests in as messy a manner as he could manage in such a short time.

The proprietress was the last, and he spun this out, letting her flee from room to room, sobbing and shrieking at each nightmarish sight. As he stepped carefully over the stained floorboards, stalking down the hall after her desperate, faltering steps, he felt like a child playing at being the man eating giant. She finally reached the guest room where her daughter hung, and gave a bloodcurdling scream.

With a weary sigh, Franz snatched her from behind, draining her to the point of death. She would not last long. Perhaps only as long as it took Lenfent to get here? With a gentle push, he set her stumbling, then tumbling back down the stairs. It was a miracle, he reflected, as he gazed down at her looking like a broken doll at the bottom of the blood-streaked steps, that she had not cracked her neck or head.

He watched as she struggled blindly to her hands and knees, then fell, then grabbed a chair to lift herself. 

The front door opened, and Franz ducked backwards out of sight, finding an alcove outside where he could watch through the small light window. 

Lenfent stepped through with downcast eyes, only for them to widen as the landlady fell into his arms. 

"M'sieur! Au secour!" she cried, bloody hands snatching deliriously at his face and leaving streaks of crimson on his cheeks and forehead. With a final shudder she fell limp. Franz could not have timed it better. 

Franz watched as Lenfent stared at her body, stunned, and let her fall to the ground. Then he seemed to awaken, and he rushed up the stairs. In his hurry he slipped on the bloody floorboards, tripping and skidding along the hall before scrabbling to his feet and running for his friend's room. It smeared blood all over him. Franz ducked quickly to another vantage point to watch.

Lenfent was standing at the threshold of the room, mouth limply open in shock at the macabre tableau before him. He made no less a fright, his hair disheveled, his face and hands smeared with blood and large spreading stains of blood on his knees and shoes where he had fallen. 

"Rostoire!" he exclaimed uselessly, and rushed to the bed. He recoiled at the deadness of the body, backing up until his back hit the wall. Then, curiously, a short bark of laughter escaped him. It was a desperate kind of hiccough, and he seemed captured by it, one arm holding his middle and the other pointing at the body of his friend. He laughed so hard he had to close his eyes and clamp both hands over his mouth, and he slipped down to the floor, laughing helplessly as he fell into the blood sprays. He hugged the girl's dismembered head to him like some grotesque child's comfort, smearing the blood all over himself as a result. 

"I've broken him," Franz jested under his breath in disgust. He had seen enough. This was nothing Lenfent could hide alone. At the very least this would make his activities more interesting, if Armand insisted he continue surveillance. 

He looked down at himself, everything drenched in blood. The slaughter had been messy and the coachman particularly bloating. Where Lenfent was merely stained, Franz was saturated. He looked up and nearly fell off the ledge where he lurked. Lenfent was standing at Franz's window, and laughing still, looking straight up at him. Even as the laughter undid him slowly, Lenfent's face began to entertain an unfriendly expression that made Franz shudder despite himself. 

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he muttered, not expecting an answer. Despite himself he jumped when Lenfent slammed a bloody palm print against the glass just inches from his face, before it slid down, the toneless, low laughter pushing him to the floor, but his disturbing gaze did not leave Franz. 

He left the laughter in the room and made for the nearest canal, diving in to the cold water without a second thought. The blood was fresh, and as disgusting as canal water was, the mess of concoctions thrown into it managed to wash out his clothing and slough off what was in his hair and skin. 

He sat, satiated and filled with blood, and smacked his clothes dry on the banks of the Seine. He had spilled most of it, but five guests and two innkeeper family members, even partially fed upon, made for some heady reserves. But he was in a hurry. He had to get back, have an alibi, before Lenfent returned to accuse him. 

When he returned to the theatre hours later, Lenfent had not even returned yet. Eleni and Felix were running about, asking anyone if they had seen the composer. 

"Krulper, you've been out, haven't you? You didn't see Nicolas, did you? No commotion?" Felix asked gruffly. 

"Not at all, M'sieur," Franz replied politely. Commotion? Did they already know?

"It's nearly dawn," said Felix, rather stating the obvious, Franz felt. "If he is not back soon, we will send out a search party."

"If I can be of service," Franz said with a bow of his head. 

"You will hear from us," Felix assured him, and left to help with the preparations for tomorrow's premiere.

It was not an hour before sunrise that Franz was helping move some boxes of props from storage upstairs down to the stage that Nicolas slipped in through the side door in the alley. 

He was quiet and was not gesticulating wildly, which was good, but that did not help his general appearance of bloodiness. 

"Dear God," Arthur said, having been in the hallway. "What did you do?" Nicolas twitched at the question, and stared at Arthur as if seeing him for the first time. He was as stained with blood as Franz had seen last time, only he looked even paler. He must not have fed in the meanwhile. 

"Nicki!" Eleni gasped, dropping the ledgers she carried, and came rushing down the hall. "What happened?" Then, looking to Arthur, she said, "Get Felix. DON'T tell Armand!"

"I didn't mean," Nicolas began to say, looking exhausted and faltering, and Franz realized and remembered this was just a fledgling. He felt the approaching sun more, and his eyelids were drooping. With a blood-covered hand he left another palm print on the plaster of the wall to steady himself, and stared at the stain. 

"Where did this happen, Nicki? Did you do this? Did anyone see you feed, Nicki?" Eleni asked desperately. 

"It was Boris," Nicolas told her absently, staring past her directly at Franz. He rubbed his face, adding blood to the smears all over his cheeks and lips and forehead, and ran his fingers through his tangled mass of hair. "I thought, I tried. I didn't know what to do." He chuckled softly to himself, nudging his nose against his hand like a dog begging for a pet. 

"Oh God in Heaven, what have you done?" Felix asked, when he saw what state Nicolas was in. 

"Did anyone see you hunt? Did anyone see you feed?" Eleni asked, as Felix went to hold Nicolas up because his legs were slowly but surely giving out underneath him. 

"I didn't feed today! I wasn't even hunting!" Nicolas shouted at Felix. "Leave me be!" He shoved at Felix, dislodging his grip and sending him crashing and skidding all the way down the hall. Franz had not thought it possible for a fledgling to match strength with someone Felix's age. He must have simply been taken off guard. A hoarse, desperate sound was coming from Nicolas now, a strange quavering cry that was closer to a laugh than anything else. It made Franz uneasy. He had not thought the incident would affect Lenfent so deeply, to send him towards instability. He may have been all this time, but Franz had seen no evidence of that beyond a great passion for music. Had Armand known? Was that what he meant by 'lucid'?

Nicolas hunched over, clinging to the wall as he slid down the plaster to the ground, the sun's rising drawing a blanket of lethargy over him. He left a long straight trail of blood on the wall as he slowly fell to the floor. His eyelids drooped and blinked, struggling to stay awake, but he did not struggle when Felix returned and scooped the fledgling into his arms. They would place him in his coffin and no doubt, when he was calmer, get the truth out of him. And Franz would have great fun, watching Lenfent trying to convince them it was him, instead of what conveniently appeared to be what they already assumed the moment Lenfent returned home trailing blood. 

The next night, Laurent came in from the newspapers with an article to show everyone. Horrific slaughter. Stagecoach inn. Girl's corpse desecrated. Innkeeper's wife exsanguinated. The names of the deceased were printed as well, according to the papers they carried. 

Nicolas drew stares and black looks in the halls. He still wore the bloody clothes from the night before like a horrific apparition, and even his hair had dried blood in it. 

"You sicken me, Lenfent."

"You /are/ sick!"

"We all play with our food from time to time but I don't build it an abbatoir!"

"Who cares what you do! They're sheep! They pass through and disappear!" Nicolas shouted. 

"Hah? so you admit it!"

"I never thought you'd go this far, Lenfent!"

Nicolas slammed the door shut, and fled into the night. Moments later the door banged open, Eleni following with heavy cloak.

"Franz?"

"Ah. You're early."

The angel waited patiently beside him, and with the authority of someone who could force Franz into anything, led them to his office. 

"How was your evening?" Armand asked solicitously, hands clasped behind his back as he stood before his desk. "Did you find the watch's origin?"

"It was difficult to gain access, but I discovered the identity of the watchmaker, and the man who purchased the watch."

"And was it Nicolas?"

"No, sire. A man named Boris Rostoire."

"He shares the same name as a mortal killed last night with some others."

"Sire?"

"We are trying to find out if Nicolas was the perpetrator. He did not feed last night, but your inquiries into the watch give us more information."

"Yes sire."

"How very convenient."

"Sire?"

"A mere observation. A rather obvious fact." And in that moment, Franz realized that Armand knew. And it did not seem he cared Franz had framed Nicolas. 

"Wouldn't reading Lenfent's thoughts be able to give anyone the truth, sire?"

For the first and only time, Franz noticed Armand looked uncomfortable. 

"Have you ever tried to read Nicolas de Lenfent? No? Once you attempt it, you will understand why reading his mind is not the problem, but rather comprehending it is. We are very limited in what we can understand or influence."

Outside, Eleni chased Nicolas over the rooftops as quickly as she could, hoping he would not slip away as he somehow could manage. 

"Nicki! Nicki!" She shouted, but he kept running. He hadn't fed, neither tonight nor yesterday, if he was telling the truth, and she could catch up with him easily. 

"Niko, please!" She blurted, and finally he came to a stop, collapsing to his knees but then tumbling off the building into the alley below. By the time she reached it, he had drained the thief there and was taunting the man he had almost mugged. 

"Nicki, what happened?" 

"Shush, I'm playing with my food, just like they say," Nicki said to her, keeping his eyes in the man he had cornered in the alley. 

"What were you doing to Boris?" Eleni asked, as the mortal fumbled in his wallet for money to offer. Nicolas smacked his hand aside like a bothersome gnat, sending louis flying everywhere. 

"What does it matter?" Nicolas asked, as he approached the mortal. To Eleni's surprise and alarm, the mortal suddenly relaxed, captivated by Nicki's gaze. She had not known or seen Nicolas enthrall anyone before. What else did he hide from them? Could he be hiding this slaughter?

"You were trying to tell me about Boris last night, and tonight we see his name as the deceased on a twisted crime. A girl was dismembered and hung in pieces from the ceiling!" Eleni said, feeling her anger rise at the thought. Could Nicki have been capable of it? Everyone slaughtered. He wasted blood, but he hadn't had a drop last night. Yet Nicolas was all about extremes. Who had drained the woman, then?

"Disgusting, isn't it?" Nicolas replied absently. "I visit him and all I hear are screams and screams." He opened his arms and to Eleni's alarm the man walked into them, not even making a sound as Nicolas embraced him and pulled him in with his fangs. Her nostrils flared at the scent of blood- Nicolas was spilling it again, indulging in the flavor so much he worried the wound and broke the seal -and she waited as they both slumped to the ground in each other's arms. Suddenly a moan and a violent shudder tore through Nicolas and Eleni leapt forward, flinging the two apart, but it was too late. He had taken the Death into him! 

"Oh Nicki, Nicki, please," she murmured, as he blinked muzzily, head lolling in her arms as she held him. "A fine pieta we make!"

"Have a little faith," he whispered, his face aglow with happiness that took her breath away. She had never seen him like this, so, so joyful, a simple undiluted peace. Even when he was pleased it was like giving a suffering patient a shot of morphine. He knew the pain of before and after and also knew the pain of knowing it was temporary. There was a fearful bitterness to his pleasure these nights. But this was a pure bliss he must have had before he ever encountered any darkness. The Blood brought it, and the Death kept him from remembering. Had he done this before? Left himself vulnerable when out on the hunt, lying dazed in an alleyway for any unfortunate mortal to discover? A bloody finger rose and swiped weakly against her cheek, painting a red streak. He smiled the simple smile of a child. 

"Nicolas? Why did you see Boris last night? Were you there?" Did you do it?

Nicolas frowned and Eleni wept inside to have disrupted the pleasure of the swoon. He had so few pleasures now, she knew. 

"There was so much blood," he murmured sleepily. "So much screaming. Prussian blue. I walked through. No one was running. I was going to him. He was going to die."

It told her nothing, except that Nicolas had heard screams. But that was not so strange anymore, with Nicki.

"He is dead, Nicki. Boris is dead," she told him, as she lifted him in her arms and began heading home. 

"They were always going to die," Nicolas said, and his eyes flickered to the corpses beside them. "They kept scorning and mocking me and then he was begging and I listened, when none of it matters. They'll be dead soon. And I'll always be there to see it!"

He fell silent for the rest of the rooftop journey home, contenting himself with looking up at the stars and smiling at her face. He was not much better when they returned to the theatre, and roamed the hallways distractedly. 

They watched him weave back and forth, careening into the walls and leaving bloody palm prints behind. 

"What's the matter with him now?" Arthur asked, joining her. 

"He took the Death into him," she murmured. What could they do for him? Had he committed those murders?

Nicolas collapsed against a wall, smoothing his hands against it, then lurched off in the opposite direction and into his room. The door slammed shut. 

"You should get him cleaned up before Armand sees him. He said last night he wanted to know exactly who did it, not just the easy explanation," Felix said solemnly, wiping his hands with a rag, wet with water and blood he'd wiped off the walls as he chased after Nicki's random trajectory. 

"Whatever does that mean? Does he know something we don't?" Arthur asked. 

"He said he visited Boris, one of the deceased. Old Sorbonne classmate," Eleni said absently. 

The side door shut, admitting Laurent and his sober expression. 

"Well? What did you find?" Felix asked. They sent Laurent out for conversations with the working class, the common people. Ironically, he seemed to have a knack and affinity for the Third Estate. Out of a black silk handkerchief he raised Nicolas' bloody gold pocket watch for them to see. There were still pieces of mortal flesh stuck to it. A pit of dread opened in Eleni's stomach. 

"This was used to garrote the Russian," Laurent said heavily. "I palmed it from the detective, so that it could not be traced back to us."

"It means nothing," Eleni insisted. They all looked at her. "He visited the mortal from time to time. He could have left it there. The murderer could have picked it up as a convenient weapon."

"We had rehearsal the night before. He uses it to time when to switch practice pieces," Arthur pointed out. 

"Should we confront him?" Felix asked. 

"We could send Eugenie to do it. Or Laurent," Eleni said doubtfully, unsure whether Nicki revealed more details offhand to these two because he did not feel they were a threat, or more that he truly confided in them, for where would that leave Eleni?

"What are we talking about?" Franz asked as he came towards them in the hall. 

"Our dear concertmaster's watch was found as a murder weapon," Arthur said lightly, before Eleni could stop him. "We might as well draw straws to confront him in it."

"I'll do it," Franz volunteered. It would give him the opportunity to set things right with last night's unsettling encounter, and to see what Armand meant about reading Lenfent's mind. 

"Your offer is noted, but the four of us know him better," Felix said gravely. 

"All the better to have me do it. He does not care for me the way he does Delphine or Pierre, but he does not care for my respect, either," Franz argued. "At the very least one of you can ask him after I do, to see if he is lying or changing the story."

"He's not denying it at any rate," Arthur said. 

"That doesn't mean he did it," Eleni snapped. 

"Of course not," Laurent said soothingly. "He doesn't care about it enough."

"Permit me to try," Franz insisted, and Eleni finally nodded. 

"We will be listening outside the door," Eleni warned him. 

Franz nodded, and rapped his knuckles on the concertmaster's door. 

"Go away!"

"Maestro de Lenfent? It's Franz. May I enter?" 

"I'm busy! What do you want?"

"To give you information it is in your interest to discover. The others will not tell you."

The door cracked open and Franz wasted no time slipping in before the violinist had even fully pulled the door open. It shut behind him and he swiveled, clicking his heels together nervously. 

"I feel it is my duty and loyalty as an orchestra member to inform you that they found your gold pocket watch at the crime scene, wrapped around a victims' neck."

No reaction. The violinist looked blankly at him, as if expecting an explanation for why he ought to be impressed. 

"They suspect you," Franz tried again. "You-"

And then the composer giggled. He covered his mouth but he giggled all the same and Franz stared.

"I am coming to you to offer my aid and support," Franz said with a frown. 

"As Armand's lapdog? When he heard from you what was found? When no one else wants to believe differently?" Nicolas asked sharply, suddenly clear and alert. Franz must tread with care. How had Nicolas known what he reported? That he reported at all?

"You do not give them the opportunity," Franz said. 

"Any one of you is drenched in blood," Nicolas whispered. "You pretend you watch through the glass when I could reach through and pull you back in."

"I didn't," Franz said, then remembered they were listening, and gentled his voice. "And why are you on the inside of the glass at all?"

"I never said I was the one inside." An unfriendly smile. Lenfent was still in his bloody attire, looking like a lost ghoul. His hair was snarled with matted dried blood, and his tongue kept darting out to lick the strands and blood that had dried on his face. His clothes, though once very fine, were stained all over albeit not saturated the way Franz's had been, and there was a long waterfall of dark red running down Lenfent's front where he had spilled his meal. His breeches and stockings were no better, but his fine, neat hands were clean. A washbasin by the mirror was filled with pink water. 

"Why are you unconcerned what they think? They found your watch as a murder weapon for a grisly crime that had Paris talking. If anyone knows of your connection to it, all of Paris could come down on our heads," Franz insisted, approaching him. Nicolas did not retreat. 

"Let them think what they will," the violinist said, reaching for a wet rag to wipe at his hair. Franz stepped backwards from the splashes of blood in disgust. "They always have, with one thing or another."

Franz watched as Nicolas squeezed the rag so that the water ran down his hair and the sides of his face. He was staring into the mirror, and was as still as a statue. It was now or never. 

Wrapping himself in the thoughts of the coachmen and people outside, he felt out for Lenfent's mind, trying to lay flush against it and sink in slowly and unnoticed. What he found instead was a wild and untamed Charybdis of thought and emotion and most of all, sound. Like an oceanic whirlpool, susurrations of the thoughts and feelings of the vampires in the theatre and the mortals on the street bled into Nicolas' ever-open mind, some occasionally louder or brighter than others. Franz Krulper felt small in the deluge, a piece of driftwood being pulled into the center, and when he tried to pull out he found the gravity of the well too strong for him. The mental detritus buffeted him this way and that, disorienting him so that all he could do was grab onto snatches of music he recognized, melodies F√©lix hummed when he thought no one was watching, an old Italian melody he had never heard before, a snatch of Greek, a symphony by Mozart, a fugue by Bach. All these mixed in the storm and became one overwhelming sound that threatened to obliterate his sense of being. Desperately he clawed against the tide, bouncing against recognizable thoughts, Eugenie's, Eleni's, even Armand, who he had tried to read and whose mind he thought impregnable. Perhaps Nicolas came in another way, and the deluge was so vast he could not filter anything useful from it. 

Finally with a gasp and a wash of white, he escaped the yawning maw of Nicolas' mind and the storm that rushed in. 

The violinist was calmly wringing out his hair, and his skin was clean, and he said, "Do you have anything new to tell me, Herr Krulper?" And Franz could not fathom how he could calmly form words, how that ruin of a mind, and ruin it was for nothing else could have produced such a vacuum but a great fracturing and splintering of whatever was once there, could compose the music it did and maintain the sensibility and sarcasm Lenfent sometimes cultivated. 

And in the same flash he realized Lenfent was far more dangerous than he realized. He could read Armand. He could, he knew things, snatches, because he simply took in everything. There was no telling what he recognized and what he thought of it. 

"Expect some inquiries, M'sieur. That is all," Krulper replied, shaken, clicked his heels and showed himself out. 

Nicolas looked after him, bemused. What torments was Armand putting his protege through? Quickly he stripped off the sticky dry clothing caked with blood and tossed on a fresh shirt and a pair of light colored breeches. He heard steps in the hall, quite intentional, and suddenly shoved himself against his door, locking it with a little key hung on a rough string from around his neck. He had it installed during the day, without anyone knowing. They had always locked it from the outside but he had managed to locate a locksmith without being followed. 

Holding his breath, he listened for the deliberate tread of Armand's shoes, waiting outside the door. How long was this going to go on before it bubbled over? The infernal little beast was determined to collect what was not his. Bad enough that he mooned over Nicolas when he composed, too frenzied to comprehend his presence to voice a complaint. The coven master thought to exercise his desires and wants, denied by Nicki's maker, on the fledgling instead. And he had been surprised to be rejected!

"You cannot lock this door," Armand said in a low voice from the other side. He could break it, Nicolas knew, but then the others would know of his weakness and his untrustworthiness. They saw him merely as a powerful parent of the coven now, as much as the idea made Nicolas laugh and laugh and laugh. 

"I just did, M'sieur," Nicolas muttered to an empty room. "Get Franz to do your dirty work with someone else. Leave my business out of it."

"There are other matters that demand my attention. You are suspected of serious crimes that could undo our safety. Nicolas, we must find evidence to clear you, or-"

"You can call me by my family name," Nicolas ground out between clenched teeth. His hands were shaking. Armand sounded so reasonable, but Nicolas could remember the blood and the pain. Sometimes he could remember snatches of hell, of fire and rape, but he was never sure if they were nightmares or real. It was hard to tell if waking life was a nightmare as it was. It was all he could do not to flinch and scramble away from the very sight of Armand. If he twitched away from F√©lix or the others despite telling himself the danger had passed and they were brothers and sisters, they were forgiving and ashamed. He knew it was the only reason he was given the latitude he was. But his fear of Armand was too deep and too sharp. 

It had soured inside him, making him doubt his own thoughts and his own fear. What had he expected with Boris? The memory of what happened last night was vague, but he could feel the strange obligation to his former compatriot, and the shock of the landlady falling dead at his feet. The rest was a blur, thinking he was drowning in a sea of blood and screams, slipping as he tried to retrieve the girl's head. She wouldn't like for her head to be so far. And he was so sure Krulper was there, only was it actually part of his recent warning instead, transposed onto his murky memory? 

"M. de Lenfent," Armand tried again, and this time Nicolas backed away from the door. Armand was going to, he could almost hear it, but there was too much noise, and the blood was still loud in his veins, whispers pouring through his arms. What if Armand just wanted to help? But no, Armand hadn't helped. Armand had made horror seem intimate and normal and had made the normal world so alien that a part of Nicolas shrank away from it still, drawn to the flame of Armand's cruelty and whim, because that was safe and he knew it and he couldn't imagine anything else, couldn't remember or fathom how he had once walked as his own man down the streets of Paris and attended classes and argued with Lestat about anything at coffee houses. He couldn't understand how that could be done. 

But Armand allowed him the familiarity of the walls of this room and the writing and now Armand was going to come in, Armand was thinking Nicolas was his, was bristling at the idea of him locking any door against him, of not having him all the time, and Nicolas shrank away, climbing onto the cot and pressing himself into the corner to get away from the images flooding into his mind, of Armand at his neck, of them naked and bloody and Nicolas crying out as Armand thrust into him and pierced him over and over with his fangs and his cock, of Nicolas weeping in Armand's grasp and yet clinging to him in need and adoration and worship. It sickened Nicolas and he clapped a hand over his mouth as Armand unlocked the door with the power of his mind and shut it behind him softly. He turned to Nicolas, deceptively gentle and beautiful, and suddenly Nicolas rose in anger. How dare he!

"Parlor tricks worked on me as a mortal but they will not work again!" He growled, heading for the door. He gasped despite himself when Armand yanked him backwards, throwing him onto the cot and pinning him down by the wrists, O, not by the wrists. Something in Nicolas' brain snapped and coiled against this feeling and his entire body have a violent shudder. It remembered this. It remembered and feared it and a sob rose in his throat and it hurt to swallow. He glared at Armand through a mist of unfallen tears. "Unhand me! I am not your plaything, little boy!" 

Armand slapped him across the face, making his head spin and his vision see stars, but it meant he released one wrist and it gave Nicolas the chance to claw at his collar and try to yank his smaller frame away. It was pointless against a being of his strength. 

"You are mine," Armand whispered, and Nicolas narrowed his eyes. 

"You're mad to think so," he replied. "I may rave and frenzy and hallucinate but you are truly mad, little sir."

"You're mad yourself to think you can provoke me without consequence, to expose the safety of all the members of this theatre," Armand said. 

"Spare me your lecture," Nicolas sneered, but despite himself his breath hitched in his throat when Armand shoved his knee between his legs, pinning him open as they lay on the cot, Armand hovering on his hands and knees as he recaptured both of Nicolas' wrists. 

"Everyone knows you are mine. Your body. Your mind. Your heart, one day," Armand promised, raising his eyebrows. 

"Then they are just as mad," Nicolas scoffed, and tried to twist again, but the frenzy was not in him and he had not the strength for escape besides. 

"Yes, do try one of your tricks. We have been trying to figure out that Gift of yours," Armand said patiently, and it made Nicolas still. 

"What Gift?" He asked suspiciously. 

"Tell me, what is it you think when you do not wish to be found, when you wish to escape or flee notice?" Armand asked, tilting his head to one side to inspect Nicolas. A flash of memory passed over the violinist, lidless eyes, a sky in Hell, and laughter passing through his ears as someone bled and knives danced through his skin. He shuddered and a desperate noise sounded in his throat. Not again, please, not again. 

"I don't know what you mean," Nicolas replied, trying very hard to stay calm, but here was his tormentor bearing down on him and he would start babbling in panic any time now, and then Armand would be right, he would really be mad. He could tell himself these were episodes of panic, that was all, and the lie suited for now. 

"Don't lie to me, M. de Lenfent," Armand said carefully, and he bent so that Nicolas could feel his russet brown curls tumbling from his ribbon tie, soft against his nose, and his lips parted and he scraped his fangs against Nicolas' neck, fully aware of how his breathing quickened, his chest heaved, and he whimpered, a straining desperate sob in the back of his throat that had no language other than fear. The memory was strong even if the specifics were hazy. "You disappear when you want to. Even to us, you vanish the way we do to mortals. What are you thinking? How do you do it?"

"I don't, I don't," Nicolas babbled, hyperventilating at the press of Armand's hard cock against his leg when the coven master lowered himself. "Eleni. . ."

"No one will come for you," Armand promised him. "Everyone knows this is my right as coven master, and your master. Now tell me, my faithful servant, my composer, my violinist." He pressed hard against Nicolas' wrists, making him wince, and began to sink his fangs into his neck. He bit down on empty air, even though he had not even felt Nicolas move. The violinist was nowhere to be found. Armand stood and whirled to try to spot him in the room. The door was still closed, and Armand could not pick up anything. He looked under the bed, the beautiful polished cherry wood desk, behind the bookcase. He saw the reflection in the mirror finally, Nicolas huddled in the corner between the wall and the armoire. He looked back and could not see him directly. 

"How are you doing that?" Armand asked, intrigued. He had never seen such power from a vampire before, much less in a fledgling. A new entry in their catalogue of talents. Nicolas did not stir, his hands covering his face in a way that eerily unnerved Armand when could only see it in the mirror. 

"Nicolas? I can see your reflection," Armand said, and smiled when Nicolas looked up, eyes wide with fear. "Oh yes. Could it be you really don't know what you are doing? There are not many who can fool my vision like this." Using the mirror as a guide, he approached Nicolas with the strange apprehension of nearing an invisible monster who he could only see when he was too close and it was too late. It sent a delicious jolt of fear in him and he savored it as it passed. There was the emotion that Nicolas brought out in him. None other. Blindly and using the mirror as a guide, he reached out for Nicolas' cheek, and was rewarded with a curious flicker in his vision, as the rest of the violinist flashed in and out of existence, anchored by Armand's hand on his cheek. His hands lowered and his eyes were closed tightly, and when he opened them Armand dove in and slashed into his neck, drinking deeply and quickly before he had time to react. 

It was all he could do to prevent the maelstrom of Nicki's mind from assaulting him, but to his surprise he was deposited onto a lonely shore instead, then onto the back of a black albatross, then down into an endless cave. He withdrew gasping, leaving Nicolas stunned and bleeding, and stumbled to his feet. He had never seen anything in Nicolas before, not like not, not without some control over himself and how he moved. He felt like some crude monster as he watched Nicolas slap a hand to the wall, tripping over his feet and nearly falling before realizing how close this brought him to Armand, and scrambling to the door. 

Armand slapped him down easily in his blood loss and his terror. He was going about this all wrong, he thought, as he dragged Nicolas kicking and making desperate half-articulate whines in his throat back to the cot, flinging him there. 

"If it takes me a century, so be it," Armand said, watching Nicolas cringe and try to hide in the corner, flickering eerily in and out of sight. It would have been beautiful and magical if it had not meant a way to escape Armand. He snatched Nicolas by the wrists again, aware of the trained response, the way it was seared into his mortal and immortal brain. "You cannot escape from me. And the others will neither care nor listen nor understand. All you can hope for is to endure."

Nicolas was shaking with suppressed sobs, but his brows knit in a frown and he stuttered, "f-f-fuck y-you, A-Armand. You c-can tr-tr-try!"

"Oh don't worry. I intend to," Armand promised him, wrenching a bleeding kiss from him, fangs sharp as they sank into those lips that begged to be abused, taking rather than merely grazing and scraping in a love bite. He felt Nicolas kick against him, surprised by the strength of it from this fledgling, but of course what had he expected from Magnus' line and now Lestat's line? Madness had nothing to do with it. He released the violinist, slumped against the wall, bloodied and dazed and breathing shallowly. Glassy unfocused eyes tried to meet his gaze. "You ever try to disappear from me again, and you'll find out what my displeasure looks like. I assure you it will be much harder to bear than my current. . .attentions." He looked down at the writing desk, and flung the quill and paper at the prone fledgling. "I know you did not murder your sentimental schoolmate. All you're good for is this, after all, so get to it."

Nicolas' fine fingers blindly sought out the instruments that had scattered on his chest, his eyes not leaving Armand. He looked thoughtful, and Armand was almost afraid he would say something revealing, but instead he seemed to refocus, some iron coming back into him as he shuddered and righted himself. He was gritting his fangs and the cords of his neck were tight, but he rose and walked past Armand and sat down at the desk, and the only thing that betrayed him were his quivering hands. 

"Very good," Armand said approvingly, bending close, and he saw Nicolas close his eyes and hold his breath and a violent shudder pass through him as he got himself under control. The others suspected Nicolas to be mad, but Armand had seen few with this much self-control, especially in the face of torment and pain and terror. 

He placed a kiss of ownership on Nicolas' cheek, watching Nicolas further stiffen, then backed away and closed the door with a smile. He paused, and listened for the breakdown. Eleni saw him in the hall and raised her eyebrows questioningly. He shook his head. "He is working. He does not wish to be disturbed. I have resolved the matter of the murders. He is not the culprit."

Eleni gave a sigh of relief and clasped her hands together. "Oh thank you, Armand. I knew it wasn't him," she said softly. 

"Your devotion to him is admirable," Armand said, gazing at her impassively. 

"He needs us as we need him," Eleni replied. "Without him, we do not have any guide or ruse to introduce us into this era."

"He has created a new framework of fantastical rites," Armand conceded. "But that does not mean he is to be humored on all fronts. Remember that, my child."

"Of course," Eleni said, bowing. "Francois is ill, do you know? He has asked for some time."

Inside, Nicolas shuddered, listening to their conversation, but bit his lip and set his pen to paper. Lestat would not be coming for him. No one would be coming for him. It was Eleni, of good intentions and worried glances, who still listened to Armand and made secret plans in her head she dared not whisper, who was his only ally. Perhaps Felix, who was too cautious for his own good, who stayed by Nicolas' side as if he did not notice, as much a bodyguard as a jailer. All Nicolas could do was bide his time, find a way to get through the work he wanted and then leave as soon as he could with Eleni.

He didn't realize how much time had passed until a pounding on the door shook him out of his trance. Eleni entered, and he blinked, staring down at the pile of pages he had written. Had that much time passed? What was all this about? He would have to read it later and find out what the story was. So much happened, all at once.

"Nicki?" she asked gently, giving him time to wake.

"Mm, yes?" he replied, rubbing his eyes and looking up at her wearily.

"I have some good news and some bad news," she said. 

"Francois is dying of consumption," Nicolas replied immediately. You could hear it in the cough. Mortals were so weak and frail. It was a wonder he had survived as long as he had. He had had time to mourn Francois, a favorite, who gentled him somehow and calmed him, who didn't have to understand to love Nicolas. The father he didn't have.

"So you know!"

"I knew it last week. It will be soon. I do not find it pleasant to keep him working if he does not wish to, not if he is unwell," he replied. "What is the good news?"

"We have spoken to him of our ways. Eugenie will bestow upon him the Dark Gift," Eleni announced in a hushed voice.

"What?!" Nicolas cried, leaping to his feet in outrage. "Absolutely not! Are you insane?"

"Nicolas, please!" Eleni said, trying to calm him.

"No! No, no, no, not him! Why can't you leave things be?" Nicolas demanded. One of the few good things left in this rotting canker of a theatre and they had to take it, never mind a natural death of a man advanced in years and talent, no, of course not, prolong his career and never let it end, inject perversion into his goodness and and--

"We're not injecting anything!" Eleni protested. Had he said all that out loud?

"You're taking yet another mortal and bringing him-ah, I thought we were never to harm any mortals here! What about the oaths of the Old Ways?" Nicolas asked.

"It is not harming him. He has asked for it, once he found out what we are. I thought you would be pleased. I know you are very fond of each other," Eleni said, watching Nicolas pace his room and run his hands through his hair.

"Yes, no, of course, but, not like this! I didn't want this for him, him stalking through the streets taking blood alongside the likes of Armand!" Nicolas muttered. "Francois is a good man, one of the last good men!"

"Do you think the Blood will change him?" Eleni asked.

"The Blood changed me! You changed me! All of you!" Nicolas laughed shakily, flinging his arms out, his fingers clenched into claws. He spun in his room, knocking into his mirror and righting himself. "I was brought imperfectly into the fold and all the magic secrets bled through me and stained my weakened soul, and I-"

"Spare me your delusions," Armand said from the doorway, interrupting him. "The Blood only amplifies what is there already." He was leaning against the doorjamb, expressionless in black.

"Your beauty is a travesty and I laugh in the face of all you say," Nicolas nearly spat at him, shoving himself back against the wall as if Armand had pushed him there.

"Francois Abbaye is valuable, is stable, has proven reliable and respected. He has a calming influence on you and is a talented actor with the right physical appearance for what we need," Armand said. "He will be turned tomorrow night."

"I want to see him," Nicolas demanded. "Before he dies."

"You may talk to him when he has time. He is putting his affairs in order tonight."

"He hasn't even left the theatre yet!" Nicolas said, and shoved past Armand, ignoring the look of surprise that flashed across the coven master's face. He caught Eleni's eye, and his expression turned placid once more. They had not known Nicolas could sense so much.

Nicolas found Francois coughing into a handkerchief as he picked up his frock coat, and bent to help him into it.

"Thank you, my boy," said the mortal, then paused and peered at him more closely. "Sacre Dieu, to think I never suspected you were one of them too."

"I am not one of them," Nicolas said sullenly. "I will never be one of them. I'll only ever be their caged pet."

"But you love the work you do," Francois pointed out with upraised finger. "You are ever loathe to abandon it, and any of our mistakes offend you." He chuckled. "As if you are the zookeeper to a menagerie of badly behaved animal performers."

"Papa Hippo," Nicolas smiled ruefully, then bent in concern to support him as he coughed. "Is it so very bad?"

"I do not have long. It is a mercy, that I am offered this wondrous Gift," Francois replied. "But you seem troubled. Would you not have me around to berate for my clumsiness?"

"I would, but, not like this, not as a vampire," Nicolas confessed. "You have a forgiving soul. You need not become one of the damned."

"To hear you talk this way, I might mistake you for a god-fearing man!" Francois chuckled. "What would Charmoud and Diderot say to that?"

"You know you will have to take blood, take the lives of others?" Nicolas reminded him.

"As does any animal ascend the chain of predator and prey. It is only natural," Francois replied, then patted Nicolas' arm with a smile. "Do not fret, my boy. Nothing will change. I will simply keep living, and you will have all of eternity to berate your Papa Hippo. D'accord?"

"D'accord," Nicolas replied despondently, unconvinced.

The next night, he was proven correct, much to his dismay. Drunk on the power, Francois Abbaye proved cruel, selfish, and judgmental, and his first hunt went far too naturally and smoothly as he indulged in the pain of his victims.

"So much for Papa Hippo," Nicolas said, arms crossed and waiting in the hall upon his return with Eugenie. The two of them were flushed from the hunt and giggling in delight at the fear and terror they had caused their victims that night. The Blood had transformed him beautifully, now a stout, mature man in his prime without the sagging sallowness that consumption had brought his skin.

"I thought you were twenty-two, not two years old, Lenfent," Francois scoffed, smirking when Nicolas' mouth dropped open. "The time is past to indulge you with baby phrases and soft words. You'll have to run to Eleni if you want your nappy changed!" When Nicolas did not reply, he added, "that's right, I see what's been wrong this entire time. You need to grow up! Give us some more interesting plays to perform that aren't bedtime lullabies! Then maybe you'll feel like you're worth something for once!"

Nicolas' mouth opened and shut, and he had no words as Francois sauntered past him, for once without a mocking jibe in return. He then stomped to his room, and began to rifle through the plays, ripping out whole pages.

"Nicki, what are you doing? Nicolas, stop it!" Eleni shouted when she discovered him in a sea of paper.

"He's not suitable anymore! Worthless! It's all worthless!" Nicolas cried, but he let her shove him away from the wreckage.

"What are you talking about?"

"I told you not to give him the Dark Gift! It's ruined! He's not suitable for any of these roles anymore! He's not the right person!"

"Nicki. . ." Eleni suddenly clutched Nicolas to her breast, feeling him choke against her like a bird warbling softly as he sobbed. She kicked the door closed and set them both on the cot, where she muffled his sounds and rocked him gently. "I'm sorry. We didn't know. He can still act. He can still take direction. But he won't be the same anymore. You were right. I'm sorry. You were right."


	6. Communion and Whippings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not all of the Theatre's cast and crew behaved kindly towards Nicolas, and he is taken advantage of in his less coherent moments. Befuddled, he stumbles his way through existence and seeks redemption in attending Mass. Armand finds out and it does not end well. This tells the origin of Nicolas' break with Felix, where once again, Eleni must clean up what remains.
> 
> This chapter contains: Mental Instability, Mental Health Issues, Armand actually being kind, Whipping, Punishment, Catholicism, Torture

"My own introduction, Sophie Cisefoix. I have studied with the best masters in history, traveled the world to learn the dances of the native peoples. I have much to offer your art." The woman was beautiful, that was assumed for most vampires, and her dark ebony skin was polished and shone in the candlelight. Her hair was swept back and upwards, and she had applied crimson powder to her eyelids, to startling effect. With the deep burgundy and purple dress she wore, she drew stares and risked enchanting those she passed.

Unfortunately, it was not a good night for Nicolas to be focusing on anything resembling normal conversation. He sat at the pianoforte with his hands on his thighs, his fingers stained with ink and a red handkerchief peeking out from the large cuffs of his shirt. He wore no cravat and she could see his pale naked chest in the poorly buttoned opening of his shirt, but at least he had on white silk stockings to go with his brown breeches. He stared up at her for a moment and then blinked at Felix, his fingers fiddling with the quill pen in his hand. He had been writing, composing, at the pianoforte before the stage. Eleni had tied his hair back in an increasingly disheveled ponytail, but he had not yet been out to feed, and so was not composed for the normal population. Now he had to remember the process for getting up, taking a step, weighing himself against the balls of his feet before proceeding, perhaps bowing? Was it bowing?

This‚Ä¶was the famous violinist and writer for the Theatre des Vampires? This, this strange creature who was sitting before her, not even bothering to stand when she entered?

"This is Nicolas de Lenfent," the regal, dark-haired woman confirmed, sounding like she was trying not to sound embarrassed. "He writes our plays and music, and directs the rehearsals. It is his work that we perform on the stage you see before you." 

"Oh," Nicolas said, looking down at himself, as if realizing the same. He seemed to suddenly awaken, because he did his best to shove his hair back, and stood swiftly, presenting her with a perfectly executed bow. "Welcome, welcome, please forgive my rudeness. I, well, the work consumes me when the inspiration is there."

"I am a great admirer of your work, M'sieur de Lenfent," Sophie told him. "I have read the unauthorized scores that others have made of your work after the performances."

"So you read music too? You can read?" Nicolas asked eagerly, his demeanor shifting again. His eyes were very large, and she supposed that he could be more handsome if he did not look like he had just escaped from a madhouse.

"Of course," she replied, trying not to stare at the way he was pushing the heel of his palm against the side of his head without the fingers touching his hair, as if he was trying to squeeze out something from his mind. His eyes remained on her.

"Only, I am forever appalled at how many immortals never bother to learn how to read until I ask them," he said in the tones of a long-suffering saint. "It doesn't take them very long, but still. There is so much out there!"

"There is," Sophie hazarded slowly, not sure where he was going with this. To her dismay, a boy entered and whispered in Eleni's ear, and unfortunately, both she and Felix made their excuses and promises to return quickly, leaving Sophie and Nicolas alone by the stage.

"You'll want me as your lead dancer," she promised him, and he stared at her as if he had just noticed her presence. She watched him bring his ink-stained hands together, his fingers shaking, and he followed her gaze to his hands before he crossed his arms, hiding them in his elbows. Something was wrong. Something not quite madness. She stepped towards him, hoping to be close enough to tell. He was afraid, his eyes darting past her to the doorway. Who or what was he expecting them to bring back?

"I saw you on stage. Eleni is very impressed," he replied, releasing one hand to rub at his face in a very mortal gesture. Now that they were only two feet apart, Sophie noticed what she did not think appeared in immortals, a kind of dark shadowing under his tired eyes. "No doubt she and Felix are petitioning Armand for your entry already."

"I find it unusual for a fledgling to be in such a position within a coven," Sophie said, reaching out and caressing his cheek. He flinched, but she kept her hand there, and he did nothing to push her away, instead entering a frozen look, as if to endure whatever she would do. She ran her fingers through his hair and yanked his face towards her, with a small gasp.

"Who are you again?" Nicolas asked her with a wary eye, and she wasn't sure of the sincerity of his question. A blank numbness had settled over him, and he stared with enormous eyes around him, giving her a look and the stage without any spark of recognition. She released him, and he staggered before he ran his hands over the wood of the pianoforte nervously, not looking at her. He shuddered. "I'm, I don't really want this here, you know. They don't know. Do you know?"

"I think there's been a mistake," she finally decided. "Why have they brought me before you?"

His figure was hunched now, his head bowed as he looked up at her though his face was still tilted at the pianoforte. His fine fingers tented above the polished wood, the fingernails gleaming like glass. She could take him so easily, bend him when he was like this, form him to her whims. She was stunned the others hadn't taken advantage of this, that he would be immune from the inevitable power politics endemic to any coven. She had expected some kind of fear at least from her, but she could barely pick out his mind, and he did not act afraid besides. Most fledglings would when captured by an elder. He acted as if this was routine.

"We, we are many now," he said, looking as if he was struggling to find the right words. He stared down at the wood. "It's different." Then he glared up at her, and the fierceness of his gaze made her take a step back despite herself. "It's different!" he repeated. "Even Francois, he didn't seem, I thought. . ." He trailed off, wringing his hands and looking back onto the stage. His hands tense, he flattened his palm and very slowly and carefully patted the floorboards. "This, do you see, this? Mine. Ours. D'accord. It's not a good night tonight. I know that. I apologize. But when I am having a good night I am up here with the rehearsals, yelling at all the turkeys and flamingoes who call themselves dancers and actors, and the crows and woodpeckers who call themselves musicians. Our coven master will accept you. You're too good of a selling point to let go. So welcome. Eleni likes you." He did not name his liking for Sophie, but Eleni's word seemed to be enough.

"Do you decide on the actors and musicians then, if Eleni decides on the dancers?" she asked, watching his back as he shoved his unruly hair back, the curls tumbling all over his shoulders.

"Mlle Cisefoix, we are in the process of making an art that shall transcend the limitations we imagined as mortals. The marionette conceit is doing well but it is easily put aside for more serious works," he said, his voice clear and his posture straight as he spun to face her. The effect on his demeanor was instant, and she found herself wanting to listen to his direction. "Eleni understands the finer technical details of dance, yes, but it remains up to me to ensure all three cohere. For some perverted reason I cannot fathom, it fell to Armand to direct the scrim painting, and I leave him to it."

"You dislike the coven master?"

"Trouble is, he's quite good at it," the violinist mused, ignoring her and sitting back down at the pianoforte. He looked down at the music he had been writing, and it almost felt like he was fading from her.

"Why doesn't he have a say in the direction of the works?"

"Because I'm the one who writes them! Sometimes we gather ideas for sticky scenes but--"

"Bienvenue, Mademoiselle Sophie Cisefoix, to the theatre des vampires!" Laurent announced as he came in, his arms open in welcome. Eleni followed and embraced her with the kiss on the cheek, as did Felix and Eugenie. The welcome of the founding members was something they had agreed upon. This would stay, no matter how large the theatre became. They were almost twenty now, if they counted the visiting fellows who stayed for six months at a time.

"Welcome," Nicolas de Lenfent said to her with a very formal bow. The cringing, shuddering weakling of earlier had vanished, though the state of dishabille had not changed. "Dance rehearsals for new steps are Monday and Tuesday at 11. Practice is whenever Eleni schedules it, I think it's Wednesday and Thursday right now at 3am, oui?" Eleni nodded. "Bonne. To start, you'd make the right understudy for the queen and the wife roles for next week, so you'll have to introduce yourself to Agathe. Laurent and Eleni can explain the rest of the rules to you, but I'd like you to start with practice tomorrow. Do you have any questions?"

"Merci beaucoup, non," she said, taken aback by his professionalism. He gave her a curt nod, and she decided that perhaps he would be malleable when caught on a bad night. When he was like this and in his right mind, there would be no changing any direction he might have cast his actions.

 

Once she had established herself as a shrewd newcomer to the company, she set her sights on a steady rise to the top and a secure place in the coven. The current leading lady would have to go, but Nicolas was devoted to her as their angelic ingenue.

She waited for a night when the theatre was in its busiest time of year, even Eleni and Félix dispatched to attend to openings and the company's social and business responsibilities, and Nicolas was unguarded. After that first night it had been obvious that Félix was his bodyguard, though she couldn't fathom their hot and cold relationship just yet. Eugénie had alluded to something like a betrayal, but she hadn't named which side was the perpetrator, nor when it had occurred.

She rose early every night that week, in order to catch Nicolas before he fed. He was always a little more erratic without the blood, and she recalled the occasions when he would be ordered by Eleni to go out and feed, the one time she would undermine his authority in public before the rest of the company. There was no pleasing him if he hadn't fed, though it was hard enough to perform to his exacting standards when he was having a decorous night.

"I don't have time tonight to go with you, I've got to visit these vendors to inspect their merchandise. Millifoux canceled on us and we need more lumber. Then I'm supposed to visit Madame du Chevratre," she heard Eleni saying as she rounded the corner and edged near Nicolas' room. He had taken to sleeping in his office lately, always a good sign for her purposes, for it meant less attentiveness, a more erratic schedule, and the possibility of explaining away absences.

It did not seem Nicolas had responded, but Eleni sighed and murmured, "will you go out, for me, please, Nicki? This isn't good for you, and you need to assign parts tonight and begin rehearsals."

"I know what I'm supposed to do," Nicolas murmured, very faintly. "Just give me time. I'll get to all that."

There was a moment of silence. Sophie waited, holding her breath around the corner. Then Eleni left in the other direction of the hallway, but not without closing Nicolas' door.

Sophie crept up to the door and listened, then knocked softly. It sounded like someone had fallen out of his chair, from the knock of wood on the floor.

"I said I'll get to it!" Nicolas shouted wearily through the door.

"Maestro? M'sieur de Lenfent?" she asked, making herself sound courteous and timid. Beyond that first encounter, his only remarks to her had been professional. He had yet to rant at her in criticism, but she was expecting it any day now, with the increasing difficulty of the choreography.

The door opened suddenly and Nicolas stuck his head out inches from her face. His hair had been combed and tied back, but curls of it were falling out already into a forelock. His expression was harried, irritated, and she wondered if she had miscalculated the evening.

"Mlle de Cisefoix. What is it?" He opened the door wider to let her in, and stumbled to his overturned chair. She rushed to help him into it, and his shaking fingers found her arm. "It's, it's not a good night. I'm starting to feel."

"In what sense? M'sieur, I've come to ask for the lead. And a raise."

"You'll have to ask Armand for that," he said, not nearly as startled as she had hoped. Then he winced, and glanced at the bare wooden wall. "Why can't they stop?"

"M'sieur?"

"All night, the moment I wake up!" He grumbled, gesturing to the wall. With trembling fingers he tried to tie his loose cravat as he eyed himself in the mirror.

"I can get Eleni or Félix for you, if you aren't feeling well," she said solicitously, but he waved her away, trying to redo his tie.

"They're out, you know how it is this time of year. Fifty million social engagements. And what makes you think I need them?" He cast her a bleary look and winced again at something she could not hear.

"May I?" She offered, and he dropped his hands, exposing his throat. It was the opportunity she was waiting for. Quickly she seized his cravat and looped it tightly, choking him. Instantly his hands went to his throat, his expression confused. "I can go to Armand, let him know you aren't feeling well." He tried to speak, couldn't, and shook his head frantically. Interesting. "Non? What is the matter? Won't he help?" But his struggles had taken a different turn now. They were desperate and fearful, not of being choked, but of something she could not yet define, because he wasn't even looking at her. His heels clicked against the floor as he tried to push away and backwards, his hands on her wrists trying to shove her away. Tears ran down his face. This wasn't the way she had planned, some intimidation, some mental muddling, and she'd have her lead role. She released him, expecting a counterattack or a call for help, but instead he dropped to the floor and scrambled away from her, backing up against the wall. His expression was full of terror, but he was looking past her, his vision no longer in the room with them.

"M'sieur de Lenfent?" She ventured, only to have him gasp and claw blindly at the wall.

"No, don't, don't, let me go," he whispered, his voice hoarse. He put his hands over his head and tried to shove himself under the bed.

Sophie put her hands on her hips, arms akimbo, and contemplated the boy before her. She was wasting time, and someone would hear. Whatever memory Nicolas was reliving, it was stronger than any threat she could pose, and it was getting embarrassingly pathetic to watch him like this. Choking had triggered it, she was sure, or perhaps the mention of Armand.

Coming to a decision, she grabbed him by the collar and hauled him out from under the bed, hand over his mouth to muffle the screaming.

"Shut up," she commanded. "I can save you, but you must listen, little violinist."

He froze at her words, eyes finally landing on her face. A lifeline? No, she didn't know him well enough to be able to command that kind of sustained influence. Just a start, then.

"Show me your next plays. The actor assignments. Go on, before they come!" She made her expression into an exaggerated look of fear.

He gasped, and she had to stop herself from laughing as he scrabbled for the papers, not even realizing she had released him.

"Good, good," she said, looking over the pages. He hadn't written much yet, just the usual parts, the minor pageboy roles, all but the leads. Perfect. "Write 'S.C.' here, and here, and here." It wouldn't do to overdo it. "It is a talisman against, ah, against the darkness."

"Here?" He asked in almost a stage whisper, and she nodded.

"Quickly now!" She urged him, and added, "And 'N.T.' for this one." Let Nathalie sink her fangs into that one! "Now sign and finalize it."

"D'accord, just, keep them away," he whispered. "Don't let them take me."

"Of course," she said, striking him from behind on the head. He toppled silently to the floor, and she caught the fluttering pages before he landed. She stuck them in his out box for Félix to collect.

The next time the role assignments were distributed at rehearsal, a cry from Nathalie Tremieux made everyone look up. "M'sieur, what is the meaning of this? Why am I not the leading lady?" she shrieked, while Sophie sat innocently in the back row, timing it so that she was still receiving her copies. 

"What? I don't," Nicolas began, and shuffled through the pages in confusion. "I don't remember doing this, I--" He looked off into the distance, genuinely puzzled, and Sophie knew she almost had him. It was a gamble, but in their first interview she guessed his memory was fragile, at the very least in one of his fugue states. 

"Really, Lenfent, I knew you wrote in a frenzy. Don't tell us you're mad when you manage theatre business too!" chortled Francois Abbaye, one of the first mortal actors and one of the latest vampire actors, turned over great protest from Nicolas for reasons he refused to divulge. It had not made him a kinder man, and the bloodlust of the Dark Gift changed the qualities of fatherliness and kindness that he had possessed as a mortal, transformed them into possessiveness and vanity, and a selfish condescension that meant his permanency as an older member permitted him more liberties to mock Nicolas on familiar terms. 

The week they had discovered this was a time fraught with random outbursts from their composer, with pages of plays thrown out because Abbaye was no longer "suitable" for the roles, though in appearance he was simply a healthier-looking, more finely-made handsome older gentleman. The blood was not a fountain of youth; it could not reverse time. The betrayal had stuck with Nicolas for some time, and it was the first occasion they had seen him unable to return a mocking barb or playful insult. Abbaye claimed it was because Lenfent had lost an indulgent grandfather and gained a father with a sorely-needed firm hand. This did not do him any favors.

"I-" Nicolas gave a start, then trailed off when he heard the titters in the audience. A dark look came over him and he turned his back on them, looking over the pages again, running his fingers over the paper as if to reassure himself they were there.

"Hallucinating again, Lenfent?" Someone asked, throwing their voice around the theatre.

"Oooooh!" More laughter, and Nicolas' shoulders hunched, he whirled around, his expression furious.

"Maybe I wanted to have some new blood in the role, instead of the same bunch of parrots and elephants talking back at themselves for the sound of their own voice!" He shouted angrily. That cinched it, more than Sophie could hope, for it meant he would defend this mistake he didn't recall all the more fervently for this insult.

"How dare you!" Nathalie Tremieux gasped, shoving her way towards Nicolas.

"Some of us could learn more humility," he muttered scathingly, glaring at her as she approached him. "Then perhaps they could learn some new acting techniques, expand their repertoire to one!"

"Pig!" She cried, and slapped him. The crack echoed through the theatre from where they were standing, and she gasped in surprise at what she had done, gathered her skirts, and rushed away. The ban against laying hands on Nicolas was well known, like the mark of Cain. 

They remained silent as they waited and watched. Nicolas' face was in shadow, hidden by his hair and the light, his cheek still flung to the side where she had slapped it. They watched him raise a hand slowly to his face to feel the skin, and it came away with small points of blood. Slowly he brought the fingers to his mouth and a small pink tongue darted out to kick the flecks. The half of his face in the light smiled, and he turned back into the light and gathered the papers. There was a red handprint on his cheek, glaring hot in the light against his paleness. They could smell and see the tiny points of blood that her fingernails and the force of her palm had raised, and he ignored their stares as if he were wearing a badge of pride.

"If there are no further questions," he said calmly with a smile that hinged on madness, and no one dared to set him off. "Let us begin. Mlle de Cisefoix, you have the stage."

They had expected him to never cast Nathalie Tremieux for leading lady ever again, but he must have only had room for 3 grudges: his maker Lestat, his keeper Armand, and his guard Félix. As it was, however, Sophie was a brilliant success. All she had needed was that opportunity. 

 

The first week after Francois Abbaye was turned, Nicolas was inconsolable. Dozens of plays were torn apart before Eleni could confiscate all of them. Laurent built a special locked cabinet that would serve as the theatre's library, and Nicolas was to hand over any completed plays and music to be deposited there. They installed it in the main hallway, so that anyone might see him tampering with it. 

"Grow up, Lenfent," Abbaye chided as they passed each other in the hall. "First they'll lock away your toys, then it's the switch for you if you don't behave!"

Nicolas flinched, no barbed comment in reply for once. Had it been anyone else he could have said something scathing but the wound was too fresh and the creature who wore his mentor's face sounded so similar still. He shuffled the papers into the little slot they left for him, feeling foolish. 

"Just another working stiff handing in his due," chuckled Adam the American good-naturedly, but Nicolas rounded upon him, about to say something, but Abbaye was still there with glittering eyes and Nicolas heaved a sigh, running a hand through his hair. The pain wouldn't spike so hard with time, he knew. The sight of Abbaye would grow dull like an old scar, and he would forget the man Francois had been. He had to. But for now he snapped at the orchestra for the smallest things and demanded more than perfection from the actors. 

"You're imagining faults because you're willfully blind to your own!" Abbaye shot back during one rehearsal. 

"I don't need you to point them out to me, M. Abbaye!" Nicolas retorted. "All I need you for is to at least fool even the most gullible child into believing there's an ounce of genuine emotion in the lines you recite!"

"Then you and I can have a tete-a-tete, and Papa can show you what good little boys do instead!" Abbaye sneered. "Idle hands, idle mind, M. de Lenfent! Did your maker not show you enough discipline when you were turned?"

"Ten more times! That goes for all of you!" Nicolas snarled, but his heart wasn't in it. He threw down the conductor's baton and stomped off backstage, taking care to slam the door behind him. 

He could still hear their titters of amusement from some joke Abbaye made. When nothing anyone else said mattered a whit to him, when Francois had known what Nicolas needed to calm his nerves in Hell, Abbaye knew precisely how to turn the screws and where to pierce the deepest. 

With shallow gasps, he tried to calm himself in the suddenly too-stuffy room. Why wouldn't he leave? Why not abandon them to their pettiness? Delphine would be the most sorrowful but she would forget soon enough with Adam to amuse her. He could leave, could forget himself in the world, could stop all this, pretend none of it had ever happened, that none of it had ever happened to him. A cry of rage and frustration rose in his throat and he throttled it, feeling his throat thicken and his chest and hands hurt. He rubbed his wrists, trying to smooth out the trembling, and pressed his fingertips hard against the smooth polish of the desk. Slowly he laid his forehead against the coolness of the wood, then turned his face so his cheek touched it as well, like a firm embrace in the whirl of emotion that threatened to catapult him out of this room and this theatre and into the wideness of the world and perhaps even the sun. Sunlight. Did he remember correctly what that felt like?

He had picked apples with Etienne as a boy, and showed them to his mother one by one like small rubies. They were warm with the sun despite the autumn crisp and she had smiled. His vision blurred. What had she looked like? It had not been so long ago. There was creamy skin, soft and warm, so soft. Maybe there were silken strands of dark curly hair, like the Italians where one side of her people were from. Naples, she had told him. His father had dark hair but it was straight and he kept it cut short and sensible and wore a wig. Everything about him was sensible and Nicolas had learned to be sensible only his father had had a weakness, in the heart of his mother, for if he had been sensible and not wildly in love with her he would have married a dyed in wool Frenchman and not this half Italian girl from Gascony with grandparents in Naples. They had visited once, and Nicolas could see the olive groves and feel the warmth in her bark but he could not see her face. He strained with his mind's eye and the darkness was bleeding in, the grey burning everything away and he felt himself opening up over a pit and his breath hoarsened and he feared he would never figure a way out, not ever. Where would he go? Nothing but black and grey and sterile dead things, a hopelessness all around, because he could not see the warmth anymore or feel it--

"Nicolas?" A hand at his back, gentle, between his shoulder blades. He froze. He must have dozed or stared off. Not noticed someone coming in. 

"This is not a good time," he croaked hoarsely, barely above a whisper, and turned his face back to the desk so his forehead was cool and his hair shielded him from the light. 

"What makes it a bad time?" Armand asked, damn him. It seemed like he was always there when, well, not when Nicolas needed him, but when Nicolas could have needed someone. It did not escape his notice, but the caged thing in his chest was throwing itself against his ribcage and he didn't know whether to scream or cry as if either of those things were the matter. "Nicolas?"

He took a deep shuddering breath, lifting his head so his face slid through his tense fingers and he could bury his eyes into the heels of his hands, his fine fingernails buried into his scalp at his hairline. He couldn't stop shaking!

"Do you know you are saying this aloud?" Armand sounded wary, like when Nicolas did something that surprised him. 

"Just-" Nicolas began, but his words stuttered and choked in his mouth, and they filled his mouth and grew fat on his tongue and he growled at the back of his throat because he couldn't think straight, there was too much everywhere, too much of the wrong thing and he couldn't get to the right side!

"Tell me what you need, Nicolas, and I will do my best to see that it is met," Armand said patiently, and Nicolas felt himself splinter and suddenly his hands moved and Armand's ageless strength crushed his face against his chest and Nicolas raged, his fists clenched tight in the velvet of Armand's coat, his teeth gritted as he rode out the agony, trying to scream but not, trying to find the right frequency in his head, the right note to make it right again, and he balled himself right against Armand's grasp and the elder coven master held him in place, had the strength to lock him there until the fit could pass, until he could breathe and his muscles could stop tightening into steel cords and the screams in his head wouldn't be caught halfway between Armand's shirt and Nicolas' heart. 

Nicolas gave a whine in the back of his throat after fifteen minutes, and relaxed, exhausted, dropping backwards until Armand caught his limp body. He barely felt Armand picking him up gently, cradling his head when it lolled back, and placing him in his coffin. He was done. He had no more fight in him tonight and he had no more feeling left after the fit. He looked up at Armand dully, matching his concerned expression with one of mere exhaustion, half-lidded eyes blinking their every moment of vision. Armand thought of taking care of the other boys in Marius' academy, of putting them to sleep after a day's work or play or class, and his heart stilled for a moment. He brushed an errant curl from Nicolas' cold blood-sweat-soaked forehead. He had not cause to think of those sun-soaked days in a long time, not since he had entered that church to go after Lestat, and it made him pause and take a breath in his carefully constructed walls. 

"I'll clean up," Armand said softly, and closed the coffin lid. He placed the violin on its stand and cleaned the bow, loosening the horsehair. He shuffled the papers into tidy piles and sharpened the quills, then set them in a neat row. 

His composer had fits like this more often now, no longer once a month but once a week. They could find a way to arrest his deterioration, but no one understood what was wrong with him beyond the obvious insanity that crept into his mind from the moment they had raped him inside and out. Armand was the only one strong enough to control him without any property damage or complaint from the other theatre members. Felix could only use the threat of violence, and sometimes, actual violence, and he was the only one Armand permitted to lay hands on Nicolas for such purposes. It was one of the few times Nicolas permitted Armand to touch him.

"Sire. He's asleep already?" Eleni asked, passing the open doorway. It was not yet close to dawn. 

"He had another fit," Armand reported gravely. "I restrained him without incident, but he is exhausted. You have seen how he tenses, how his own mind and body rebel against him."

Eleni bowed her head and shook it sadly. 

"I thought it better to put him to bed. I think, yes, he is dozing. Do you need to ask him something?"

"He quarreled with Francois. I came to check on him, and to report the orchestra finished with their practice."

If they could be more antagonistic, it might just drive Nicolas into Armand's arms after all! He felt a shadow of excitement at the thought, but realized he would have to be prepared to see how much worse Nicolas' madness could become. How much would remain? Would Armand still want that man, once the madness was through with him?

"I am pleased there was so little incident," Eleni said, to fill in the space of Armand's silence. "Forgive me, he does not know what he does when he provokes your temper."

"My temper?" Armand asked, one eyebrow raised. "You observe not the loss of my temper, Eleni, but the concern my affection bears him."

"Y-es, Sire, of course," Eleni replied poker-faced.

This was not like dealing with Armand under Les Innocents. They all played their parts and knew what drove them, their devotion to God and to Satan's work. None of these small feelings and rivalries, these struggles for power. They suffered together and Armand was rarely called to counsel for anything beyond strategy, for what did the damned have any right to desire and demand? Armand himself echoed through the catacombs like some vagabond ghost from the past, perfect in his beauty and his devotion. 

She didn't know what to say to the creature before her. She didn't know its wants or needs or hatreds. She was still barely learning herself again. He was alternately unseemingly possessive and solemnly formal with Nicolas. He no longer called them his children, and she could not bear that treatment, not after seeing him consign so many of her brothers and sisters in darkness to the fire like so many matchsticks with no more emotion on his face than that of a sleeping child. 

"Is there anything else?" Armand asked, facing her and in doing so, closing her off from the room. 

"No, Sire, that is all." She bowed, and left quickly to see to a discreet cleaning arrangement for Nicki's house. 

The following night Nicolas staggered out of his coffin and wrote two plays, one about a puppet who mimicked everyone around him but never joined them, and another about a brilliant painter who was cursed to burn his paintings as soon as they were done because he had sold his children for a rare and fiery pigment. 

He shuffled them through the slot and into the little library box, then pulled on his black coat. The night was brisk and he still could feel the cold, thank God, and as the music surged inside his head he plowed his way through the crowd, passing through the chattering offal until he reached the quiet of a stone church, Paroisse Ste-Elisabeth-de-Hongrie. He had stumbled into the middle of evening mass, and without thinking he followed the congregation. He had come here before--it was the closest church to the theatres--and the priest and the place were familiar to him. It was confusing, to be in the places where one had been mortal and feel everything echoing. Was he merely remembering nights to come, and given a chance to repent as a mortal of his sinful ways? And then the priest smiled down at him in welcome as he knelt and placed his hands together as if no time had passed and he had not lost and abandoned his faith and had just arrived in Paris still hoping to regain and strengthen it. 

"It is good to see you again, my son," he whispered warmly as the communion antiphon filled Nicki's ears. "Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam. Amen."

"Misere nobis. Amen," Nicolas replied, as the body of Christ was placed in his mouth. He felt dizzy as it melted and he swallowed, and the choir surged in his head as he drank from the chalice and crossed himself, and returned unsteadily to the pews. It felt wrong, suddenly, and he couldn't touch the glow around him, the sounds and the priest reciting the blessings. His belly churned and wiped at the blood sweat on his face. He wanted the music to go on, so he could delve deeper into it, find that core he lost somewhere, find out what was real and what wasn't. But the Mass is ended, deo gratia, but for what Nicolas did not know. He stayed in the shadowed pew as the rest of the congregation emptied out and the priest sent off the altar boys and began to snuff out the candles one by one. 

"M de Lenfent is it? What troubles you, my child?" The priest asked, spotting him as he snuffed out a lantern near Nicki's pew. Nicolas panted, forehead glazed bloody with sweat as he rested his head on the back of the bench in front of him. Something was wrong. What had he done? "Why, you're bleeding!"

Nicolas staggered to his feet, the priest steadying him by the arm, and bent over double, retching and vomiting blood on the stone floor. He coughed and gagged, nothing but a torrent of blood with the scent of wine and wafer in it. He fell to his knees, still coughing blood, but the priest turned him so he was sitting. He closed his eyes, the dizzying darkness coming down again, and he understood he had turned away from that mortal life forever, and whatever redemption it could have offered. He thought he had blinked for a second, but the priest's hot fingers were feeling his neck for the nonexistent pulse, and shaking him though he did not wake. He felt too drained, too lost, too wrong here now that the place was empty and all he had was this gnawing emptiness that drowned out all other sounds. 

"Requiescat en pacem," said the priest, and the words rang in Nicolas' ears and he must escape with what little his life was worth under Les Innocents and by the time he opened his eyes, the priest was lying beside him with barely a struggle as his fangs tore more deeply into his shoulder, ripping away the cloth of his vestments and pouring his holy blood into Nicki's mouth. They lay in a pool of blood and wine, and Nicolas felt sickened and dizzy as he withdrew from the priest. He hadn't meant to do that! It had been instinct. It had been confusion.

He lolled to one side, and heard the front doors of the church bang closed, a swift and hurried step, a stop, then a running gait. Shiny black shoes flashed in the darkness and Nicolas recognized his protector. 

"Félix. Help," he said weakly, feeling too sick to lift his head. "I've-"

"What have you done?!" Félix gasped, stopping short of the blood. "A man of the cloth?" The accusation on his voice hurt like daggers flying through the air and Nicolas winced. 

"I felt sick," he tried to explain, as Félix yanked him to his feet, then scooped him up when it was clear he couldn't stand. "It must have been Communion; we are the damned after all."

"You took Communion? Nicki, look at me. You ate of the Body of Christ and drank His Blood? You partook of the Host?" Félix asked, and the alarm in his voice made Nicolas retch inside his mouth. 

"I'm sorry. He said he was glad to see me again. He called me his son, when I knelt during Communion with the rest. He gave me the last rites just now." Nicolas' gaze, unfocused, drifted and tried to find the body. "Everything will be all right now. I've had my last rites."

"What? Why were you in here at all? How did you even swallow the wine and the bread?" Félix asked incredulously. "That's impossible for our kind. Are you sure that is what happened?"

"I don't know! I was, I was confused, you know how it sometimes is," Nicolas said helplessly. "Can you please take me home? I feel sick but I can sleep it off. Please don't tell Armand."

"You fed on a priest, Nicki," Félix replied gravely. "You bled all over a church floor. Did anyone see you?"

"I shall never forgive you if you tell him," Nicolas promised, trying to add threat and force to his worse with a weak grasp on one of Felix's lapels and utterly failing as his grasp weakened. He paled even more and curled inwards. 

"I may have to," Félix said. "This is too dire an act for me to protect you. You must take the consequences as they come."

"No, Félix, no, he'll do his worst to me! You can't trust him like this!"

"Nicki, shh, I shall take you home. What were you thinking, taking Communion?" Félix turned towards the side doors of the church. He tried to call out to Eleni, to clean this up before anyone discovered the body. Nicolas was covered in blood.

"Don't let Armand see me, you can't trust him, please listen to me!" Nicolas begged with what strength he had left, but he felt sick and he turned inwards towards Felix. 

"I can't protect you from everything. Not from this," Félix said with what he hoped was regret in his voice. Nicolas stiffened in his arms and started to struggle, but he held him tightly as they leapt over rooftops and slunk through shadows before landing in the alleyway by the theatre. 

Unfortunately Armand's carriage was just leaving and he was inspecting the library of plays in the hall when Félix entered silently with Nicolas in his arms. The violinist looked dizzy and nauseous, and he kept trying to pull away from Félix.

Armand's hands were shaking with rage already. He had read the play of the painter. How could Nicolas have known? Armand had thought of it but once last night when the violinist was nearly asleep, but he kept his mind and his thoughts airtight! How could a wild fledgling barely able to care for himself pierce the hurt and fear so close to Armand's long-hidden frozen heart? How dare he!

"What happened?" he asked in a low calm tone. 

"No," Nicolas whispered, feverish, trying to pull away. "Félix, don't, don't!"

Félix looked down at his charge and sighed. "He is ill. I found him sick on the floor of Ste-Elisabeth. He was feeding on the head priest but there was a puddle of blood around them. He had tried to take Communion at Mass."

Armand's eyes narrowed, and he sent the call to Laurent to remove the evidence. "Why did he do that? You were to watch him tonight."

"I was, Sire. He was working and stopped early and I did not see him go out until it was too late. I do not know what possessed him to attend the Mass."

"Nor how he was able to even consume anything other than blood." Armand watched Nicolas regain his strength and try to pull away from Félix again, only succeeding in prying his fingers but not his hands. "No wonder he is ill. Has he been doing this every night?" He gestured for Félix to follow and made for backstage. 

"I do not think so, Sire," Félix said as he obeyed and tried to hush his charge. 

"Not here," Armand said, after looking over the stage for a while. But he reached into a box of props and drew out a whip. Nicolas made a terrified sound in the back of his throat, thick and muffled, and Félix took a step back despite himself. "Come."

"No, Félix, please no, don't let him," Nicolas whispered frantically, struggling as Félix's arms tightened around him in a vise and he followed Armand down into some of the new catacombs. Nicolas hated the stone rooms, drafty and cold still without the fireplaces installed, and they reminded him of Les Innocents so much he preferred to stay a ghost in Renaud's. 

"I'm sorry," Félix said, following Armand to a room where he closed the heavy wooden door. To his surprise, Armand held iron manacles in his other hand. He gestured for Nicolas to be brought to him, and threaded the chain through the loop of an elaborate spandrel in the vaulted ceiling. 

"Traitor," Nicolas hissed at Félix, as he helped his coven master enclose Nicolas' wrists in the iron manacles. He knelt on the stone floor, arms raised above his head, and stared angrily up at his captors, held up by little more than the chains themselves. He briefly looked nauseous again, but the retching had faded. 

"Drain him," Armand commanded, and Félix balked. "No? Do you imagine that makes you any less of a 'traitor' in his fevered imagination?"

"I couldn't. Not that. Never again," Félix said, bowing his head. "We made a promise." Nicolas bared his fangs at Armand in derision.

"All four of you? Very well," Armand said calmly, and leapt for Nicki's throat, draining him as quickly as he could before the images could reach him, before that stormy mind could descend. A choking sound sang past his ear and he sank his fangs in deeper and more viciously to cut it off. Nicolas tasted so sweet, a spicy heady taste that he could sink into and never sate himself with. He had been wrong--the fledgling was not like Lestat at all though of the same age they were. Something about Nicolas burned with a light found only in darkness at the bottom of a pit or a well. Lestat's own light outshone and overpowered everything. But Nicolas', Armand could see by, could love without being enslaved or bedazzled. He might even be able to dominate it, gain power over him and reduce him to a plaything for his own amusement, a worshipper at his altar willing to do anything without question, as it had been in the simplicity of Les Innocents. He felt Nicolas shaking beneath him, and the skin growing colder than cold, and he stepped back with a great gasp of air. 

The violinist did not look well. Where he had at least looked simply nauseous before, for he had at least fed on that priest, now his veins and bones stood out against his skin. He shook and shivered, his head bowed and his hair shielding his face as he recovered from Armand's vicious attack. 

Armand grabbed this chin and yanked it up cruelly to force his gaze. 

"Do you realize how close Ste-Elisabeth lies to this theatre?" He asked. "Eleni sees to it that the Theatre donates to the Paroisse Ste-Elisabeth-de-Hongrie, sorry actors though we are and too busy for services. If someone else had discovered you tonight, you would have surely been recognized, and the rest of us dragged into inquiries we could not excuse ourselves from. You risked the safety and secrecy of this entire coven for what? What was it? Some statement about the folly of faith? How we are some deluded dark religion? What was it? Tell me!"

"As before," Nicolas wheezed, but his eyebrows were knotted in fury as he matched Armand's piercing look. "Forgot I wasn'mortal. Thought it could be as before. This is the future."

Armand flung his face away in disgust. Nicolas had absolutely no awareness of what he had done. His immortal body should have made him reject and spit out the wafer and wine immediately. Armand had known of no vampire who had tried to even swallow these things. The taste was usually enough of a deterrent. 

"Félix. Whip him." He looked up at the blond warrior monk impassively. "Thirty on the back, for now."

Nicolas stiffened as Félix went around to face him. Immediately he began struggling, trying to wrest his hands out of the manacles. "No no, Félix you can't, please don't, stop it, stop, don't do it, you don't have to listen to him!"

"I am sorry," Félix whispered, kissing him on the lips, then pulling off his shirt, ripping it at the sleeves so it would come out through the manacles. 

"You promised!" Nicolas spat at his feet, but the regret at this little loss of blood was clear upon his face. Félix went around to the back so he would not be seen, and Armand stood to the side to observe the sentence carried out. Félix took a breath, as if in prayer, and closed his eyes. 

"Felix, my friend," Nicolas choked out with a faltering voice, his eyes closed. 

The first lash struck, a loud crack in the echoing room, and Nicolas cried out in surprise and arched his back away from the pain. A long pink welt appeared diagonally on his back. He refused to make a sound when the next lash came, and gritted his teeth with the next. And the next. 

Armand watched his body shaking as the lash came down, making welts rise across his pale lightly muscled back. Nicolas squirmed as if he could escape, but Armand had drained him well and Felix's aim was strong and true. 

"Ten," Armand counted, and nodded when Félix paused as if to let Nicolas rest. "Continue. Do not stop." Nicolas' head whipped up in pain as the lash broke skin for the first time, and Armand's nostrils flared to smell the blood rolling down his back. Another welt opened, and another, a cross cross of cuts slashing through his skin. "Twenty." Nicolas couldn't stop himself from grunting and gasping now as the whip shredded his flesh, and his shoulders struggled to hold him upright as they were besieged by the force and slice of the whip. He tried to stand, but every shock of pain from the whip sent his knees buckling and crashing to the floor. Blood tears dripped onto the floor before him, but still Nicolas did not scream or beg. "Thirty."

Félix wiped his forehead of sweat, then wiped the blood off the whip with a handkerchief. Nicki's back was a mess of criss-crossed cuts and half-healed scars as his vampire blood tried and couldn't muster the strength to heal him. Blood dripped down his back and stained the belt at his tan breeches, and his knees were barely holding him up. Red gouges at his wrists looked raw from where he had struggled and tensed his fists against the manacles to bear the pain. He panted, head down, gulping in air to cope with the pain and the dizzying bleeding. His arms were shuddering as they stretched above his head, trying to pull him up so they did not burst with tension, but his legs would not obey. 

Félix was shredding Nicki's shirt into strips of cloth so that he might bind his wounds until they healed, but Armand put his hand up. He walked to the prisoner and gently lifted his chin up to look at his face. Blood tears streaked down Nicolas' cheeks and had dripped off his eyelashes and chin. He was still glaring up at Armand, but his eyebrows were knit together in fear, betraying him in his dread of what Armand might deliver next. 

"You do not expose us like that ever again. You do not feed in the public spaces. What must I do to impress this upon you?" Armand asked neutrally. 

"I wasn't trying to-" Nicolas began to say in exasperation, wincing as he involuntarily flexed his shoulders as if to use his hands to gesticulate. 

"That does not matter. If you are out, one of us must know of it, if you cannot promise me with certainty that this will not reoccur," Armand said. "I have executed vampires for far less. Is that not right, F√©lix?"

Félix said nothing, bowing his head only. 

"Félix thinks we are in an Age of Light now," Nicolas panted with a wry crooked smile. "Nothing's changed. It's all just couched in poetry now. My friend." Félix flinched at those last two words, and Armand yanked Nicki's chin forwards to face his own again, a secret thrill passing through him at the startled sound his charge made. 

"They whip mortal prisoners on the back, to avoid stopping their hearts and their vital organs," he said. "The damned, however?" He nodded to Félix. "Félix must learn as well. You are his charge. He is not to let you out of his sight."

Nicolas watched through his blood-sweat-soaked curls as Félix took up a reluctant position in front of him. Their eyes met and Nicki's lips drew back in a snarl. His back burned and stung, and he could feel the wounds and blood tricking down and trying to heal, even as his shoulders flexed and broke open new wounds. With great difficulty and minimal grunting, he shifted, each movement agonizing across his back muscles as he used his knees to prop himself up straighter. He had not known how much of casual movement relied upon the back. 

"Thirty on the front," Armand pronounced, as if remarking on the air, and stepped back. Nicolas was not given a hood. "See if you can lose him now, Félix."

Félix said nothing, but he met Nicolas' eye when the first lash came down. It struck him from shoulder to hip bone, a long angry red line that made Nicolas jolt and wince when that movement aggravated the wounds on his back.

"If you scream, it hurts less," Félix said in a low voice, not looking at Nicolas, and brought on the lash again. Nicolas gritted his teeth, unable to stop his groans and gasps when the next one broke skin above his heart, shocking his eyes wide open. It would have damaged a mortal's heart with the force of its strike. With vampires, it was only more pain upon pain. By the fifth lash, Nicolas had started trying to arch away from the whip, wounds on his back or no. He gave a small whimper in the back of his throat, unable to stop himself when new wounds erupted and every movement sent red hot flames of agony across his back and chest. 

"Twenty," Armand counted. 

"I was only resting!" Félix said angrily, but resumed whipping Nicolas at the impassive look Armand gave him. 

It hurt too much to try to escape the lash, and the least Nicolas could do was turn his face towards his arm, so that only one side of it would be struck by the lash. He thought he felt his ear tearing, but his hearing was as good as ever. The blessings of the Dark Gift. He had asked for this. A laugh escaped him on the twenty-fifth stroke, sounding like a sob, and he laughed again, letting it shake his body into pain to meet the next stroke. But it was too much, and he felt himself sag and try to pull his weight up again by his wrists and hands, but every time the lash came down he convulsed, his fingers letting go of the chains above him. 

Finally, it was over. He panted, small sounds escaping the back of his throat, but he hadn't screamed. He hadn't given Armand the satisfaction of weeping or begging or screaming for mercy. Thirty lashes front and back. Surely he would be left here or brought up to his coffin to heal and think of his misdeeds. Surely this was enough blood to satisfy. He hungered and thirsted, every blood vessel for a city block around pulling at him and calling to him. Armand had drained him and he felt sick still, and the pain cut through all of it and kept him in agony. 

He closed his eyes, and thought he misheard. 

"For your impudence, Félix," Armand was saying, and he heard a scuffle as Félix was shoved against the wall behind him. "Thirty more lashes on his back."

"You-surely this has been enough?" Félix asked. 

"Yes, Félix has his exercise in betrayal for today," Nicolas sneered, and retched for his trouble as the sickness passed over him again. It signaled all the muscles on his chest and back to flare and fire up and burn. He looked down at the mass of flesh and could see crosses of wounds, deep and burning. He blinked and looked again. They were relatively light, struggling to heal already. Félix had tried to be gentle but look hard. Only on one did the stark white bone of rib show through, and even that was healing as Nicolas watched. And even that hurt and burned like fire lit on his very skin. 

"Nicolas is correct," Armand said, to everyone's surprise. "Sixty lashes. For questioning the sentence. And for pulling back your blows." So Armand knew. 

Sixty lashes. Nicki's head spun at the though. Sixty more of these and just on his back and harder than before. 

"No," he gasped in disbelief. "No, Félix, you can't!" He tried to struggle, gasped in shock at the pain, to reach Félix and shake him and make him understand. Couldn't he see?

"You will inform a member of this theatre whenever you venture out," Armand said, and Nicolas winced as he shied away from his hand before Armand forced him to meet his gaze. "You will feed in the shadows of alleys and side streets and private rooms and never in the public places. Others might but you have not the skill nor control. So you must and will tell someone when you leave. If it takes a hundred or two hundred more lashes, you will learn this. Begin."

And this time, oh, this time Nicolas could not stifle the scream. Félix had been pulling back every time, but now with Armand watching and knowing, the first blow with all of Felix's vampire strength was brutal and it sliced through Nicki's flesh from shoulder blade to hip, making his arm go limp and the iron dig into his wrist, scraped and blistered raw already when the muscles it cut through failed him. And the scream released something in him and he realized Félix was right. But before that thought could finish the next one came and he howled in pain, feeling the fire of the leather scrape through his other shoulder, his arm giving like the other did, so that he hung by his wrists, and he could hear the whip slicing through the leather belt and it falling to the ground with a moist plop on the fallen blood. Dear God, how he strained for the blood!

And then the next came and he roared and flung himself against the chains and thought of blood and blood and blood, and the next one came and he screamed for the blood and felt the whistle and crack of the whip embedding itself deep into his back and the sudden oddness of cold air touching bones that were never meant to be exposed. And then the next choked his scream and turned it into a sob and he cried out and couldn't stop, he thought he—and the next one came and he screamed and didn't stop and the scream went on in his head with the next one and he couldn't break out and the iron jangled and the whip cracked and the scream kept going in his head even as his voice cracked.

"Féli! Pl'se! Stop!" he sobbed in a broken voice with broken breaths, each one a singular agony, wanting it to never have come to this, want to be gone from here, gone from any world where this could happen, and miraculously, it stopped.

"What-" Félix said, sounding startled. Nicolas had flickered in and out of existence, as if there was suddenly an invisible man in those chains. His body convulsed, and he tried to vomit, his lungs heaving as his stomach hurled, sick with pain, but he had nothing to give. All they saw was a flickering shape contorted in a different position each time.

"The chains are taut," Armand said, meaning Nicolas was still in them even if they couldn't see. "Continue or I shall add to the sentence."

"No, Félix-ngh!" Nicolas begged as the lash came down again, drawing tiny pants from him because a full breath hurt too much. He felt like a piece of skin stretched out on a rack, gently flayed in the moonlight air. Where was he? His head spun and the next lash hurt no less, and he thought it had followed him to the other place and they would find him always. His sobs couldn't find the space in his breaths and he whimpered in the back of his throat, tiny mewls that could have been pleading and could have been simple agony. Surely the next one was over, but it only sliced through him, body and soul, and he keened, gasping for air and trying not to scream because screaming hurt too much. 

His lips bled from where he'd almost bitten them clean off. They swelled and he thought they wouldn't be pleased, a specimen of human meat being moistly shredded, and Nicolas had ruined the front by biting it, and he went inside to hide from the consequences and felt the pain and fire and agony and he huddled close to it like a fireplace, and he thought he fainted but the coldness of water splashed over him to drown him and he heard "he's awake and visible. See the water? Continue." 

And the pain started and he wanted to go inside again, to go somewhere else, but the whip had taken it from him and it had taken his voice and he could only feel the choking in the back of his throat as the whip cracked and the meat sliced, and those moist sounds of flesh shredding and sliding and plopping felt so close and he felt the strain in his armpits because the whip had taken all of his shoulder muscles and was gouging into his bones, his bones, and the strain of hanging was going to his front because they were taking everything, Félix was taking everything, Félix Félix Félix, his guardian! His friend! His apple-backed currency warrior monk who had taken care of fools like Nicolas before. Who protected him. He shook his head slowly in disbelief, taking a long shuddering breath. Armand had promised not to harm him. He had not said anything about a proxy execution. 

No more blood left. No more bird chirp. No more meat for the butcher's. Just a grind of bone and the smell of bone dust in the air. Félix was quite strong. 

After a while the screaming stopped. He was tired inside and there was nowhere else he could go and they kept trying to drown him and he felt little more than a bag of bones, which was probably true. He stared sightlessly at the pool of blood before him, wondering why he couldn't have it, couldn't soak it up like roots and read the ripples in the water like music except he could. He listened to the meat in the air and the bone rhythm against leather and he tried to follow along with the ripples. But it stopped. He wasn't finished and it stopped and he had to go and he thought, I mustn't go out without telling someone. 

"Sixty," Armand pronounced, and Félix collapsed backwards against the stone wall, feeling sick. He dropped the whip and covered his face at what he had done. Nicki's back was no longer there. What had been smooth pale skin and toned flesh was a ragged collection of bones against meat and organ skin, spottily covered by thicker meat that had once been the muscles on the violinist's back. Nicolas had stopped screaming with the thirtieth stroke, and Armand had "allowed" Félix to get a bucket of water and splash it in his face. He would have preferred their prisoner unconscious. He could hear muttering and small high pitched whines in the back of Nicki's throat, and thought he must have broken him and made his mind flown. But by then it was too late. The whip was slicing through the scapulae and some of his vertebrae, and it had opened up the sides so that Félix could have threaded a finger through some of the ribcage. 

He watched as Armand approached the still-breathing figure (they could see a shadow of his lungs moving) and yank his head upwards by the hair. Nicolas had gone limp and for a second Félix didn't know if he had fainted and they would have to repeat the "lesson". The gentle touch of Armand’s hand over his lips made him wince, but it was a blessing compared to the pain of everything else. A mercy, almost, and he could have wept. He had forgotten what gentleness felt like. For that he would say anything just for this small moment.

"I. Have. T'go," was the faint distorted whisper from Nicki's bitten-through lips, and Armand nodded, releasing his head so it fell back down against his chest. Félix watched as the coven master unclamped the manacles, letting Nicolas drop to the floor with a soft splash. His tongue darted out and he gave a soft moan as he licked at his own spilled blood. 

Armand, dressed in black, looked spotless even as he hefted Nicolas over his shoulder with the effortless strength of an elder. The violinist made no protest at being separated from the blood, and he barely focused on what was happening beyond a soft grunt of pain. He had not the energy for screams. 

"Clean this up," Armand commanded, then left with their composer. 

But he did not ascend the steps to his rooms or Nicolas' coffin. Instead, he took another route to a set of rooms separated from the rest of those recently excavated. The first was dark but the second room was candlelit and Nicolas felt the burn of warm water against what had once been his back as Armand shifted him into the tub. The scrape of his chest wounds against cloth was agonizing but the relaxing burn of the water soothed him.

"You can rest soon," Armand promised, when Nicolas whimpered as he was lifted out of the tub and placed on a towel-covered bed. 

He gave a small sigh, his eyes half-lidded with exhaustion and pain, and let himself pass out. 

When he awoke it was to searing pain on his chest and back and he muffled his sob in the blood-drenched towel beneath him, unable to help his tongue licking at the blood and sucking on it. He was so thirsty and he did not know how much time had passed. Was he still him? Was he allowed to be here?

He rested his cheek against the surface and looked around the room. It was one of the stone rooms beneath the theatre-had his back not been a mass of shredded flesh he might have shuddered-but a ghastly tapestry hung over what he assumed to be the only wall with a door. Why would anyone wish to look at a battle tapestry in bed? The other paintings were more presentable, seaside paintings, one of Venice, even, perhaps a Canaletto. Terrible light for it, but vampires didn't need the light. 

He tested his hands and arms and stopped in terror of the pain as soon as he felt it begin when his arms moved. His hands were working but just barely and his head felt unusually empty. It would fill up as it always did but for now he was blissfully let alone. 

Dear God, how was he to live like this? A coven master with medieval punishments. People died from flogging. You bled and the shock was too much and you died. But Armand could whip Nicolas forever and he would survive. Or rather, he could have Félix, who Nicki had always trusted, do the deed, and the great giant would obey. And the trouble was, Nicolas could feel Armand’s methods working. He felt himself relieved that Armand gave him the mercy of his presence, that at least he attended his punishments, caressed his face in the midst of all that, made him long for his touch when everything else was spiked with flame. He wasn’t sure there was anything he could do to stop it happening. Fighting only invited more punishment, more chances for Armand to show his mercy. And God, Nicolas needed that mercy. He had little other kindness to go on.

"Did you just wake?" asked that smooth liquid voice he had grown to dread. Armand emerged from behind the tapestry with a golden chalice filled with warm blood and Nicolas had to stifle his whimper and curb his hands from reaching for it. 

He took the barest of breaths and found he could barely muster the air or energy to speak. Let Armand guess, then. He closed his eyes. 

"I was going to give you some fresh blood-" Armand began, and Nicki's eyes snapped open, damn him, his desperation no doubt visible on his face in his pained expression. "So you do want it?"

He set the chalice on a table Nicolas could not see, then pulled the towel agonizingly across the bed so that Nicki's chin hung off the bed. But it meant he had to use his neck and some of his back, which was slow in healing. 

He waited for Nicolas to unclench his teeth and for the whimpering sobs of pain to subside. Even a little movement hurt. 

"Yes, Félix can be quite brutish when it is required," Armand said with his eyebrows raised as he brought the chalice to Nicki's lips. It was just barely fresh and it was gone all too soon, but it was still blood and Nicolas wanted to lick the cup for any errant drops, but Armand took it away. He stroked Nicki's curls and brushed them out of his eyes. "You mustn't do things that require him to be brutish."

Nicki met the little monster's eyes and felt himself shrink from what he saw there. "No, I mustn't," he replied, for what else could he say?

"Good," Armand pronounced. "Rest now. I'll be back with some more in an hour."

It seemed like an hour had barely passed before he was back with another chalice, for Nicolas opened his eyes to the fragrant cup passing beneath his nose when just a second ago he had heard Armand closing the door. 

"A coven master is as much a slave to the coven as the members are to the rules," Armand said as Nicolas drank. "Our existence in numbers is tenuous in the city. I cannot let my affection for you cloud my duty to protect us all. Do you understand?"

You don't want my forgiveness or my understanding, Nicolas thought. Just my acquiescence and submission. He closed his eyes. "Tired," he whispered, because it was true, of everything. He didn’t want to fight anymore, not just now. Maybe tomorrow. Or next week.

"I am only trying to protect you," Armand whispered like a serpent in his ear, and despite the pain Nicolas shuddered at the brush of cold air against the nape of his neck, the cold lips pressed there. 

"It was you all along. Only you," he whispered, realizing too late and too tired to guard his words.

"You bring it upon yourself, Nicolas. You do not listen even when I tell you what is safe for you," Armand said, as if it was all his fault and if only Nicolas would be Armand's obedient pet, everything would be all right. 

"I'm my own person," Nicolas said, glaring at the floor. "You split open my mind, you took me against my will, and you made sure my perception would be fragile, yes, but I will only ever be my own person and never yours!" He gave a pained shuddering gasp at the energy this required, and buried his face in the bed. He was lucid and more and more lucidity meant pain. Even the confusion of the noises and the music and the screaming in his head was sometimes preferable to what he endured when he was in his right mind, but only just barely. He couldn't be manipulated like this. He could think. He could remember and regret those words that drove Lestat away. God, it was all his fault wasn't it? Armand was right in a way.

Hands touched his hair and stroked it, the nails grazing his scalp gently, and he closed his eyes and winced as he felt them open up rivulets of blood against his head before they healed. Armand crouched down before him, meeting his eye as he licked the blood off his fingers and offered one fingertip to Nicolas. He could smell his own blood. He thirsted and his back burst into pain as his body tightened and strained for it. It was so confusing, to have Armand here, bursting with blood, but he wanted to get as far away from him as possible. They had no relationship. He wanted no relationship and yet-

"Shh, don't say such things," Armand replied, stroking Nicolas' cheek as if he owned him. 

"Leave me alone," Nicolas growled, and to his surprise Armand backed away at once, standing up and taking the chalice with him. 

"Very well. But it will take you a long time to get out of here without my help," Armand said, face betraying no emotion as usual. Nicolas felt a flash of panic rip through him and he thought of being abandoned and left to heal achingly slowly in the darkness. Armand was putting out the candles one by one. "Wouldn't want these to set you on fire while you were helpless," he murmured like an altar boy cleaning up after Mass. He stood in the doorway finally, light from the hall illuminating his outline as he gazed at Nicolas prone on the bed. 

"M'sieur," Armand said with a slight bow, hesitating as if waiting for Nicolas to break down and beg for help. 

"Go to hell," Nicolas snarled, and met his eye until Armand closed the door, leaving him in the darkness with his pain and his hunger. 

The next night Eleni found him unconscious on the bed, starved from his body trying to heal the welts on his back, for the blood Armand given Nicolas had at least regrown his muscles, if his skin was a little raw. She thought he had been rendered helpless by starvation more than bleeding, and carried him upstairs into a carriage before conveying him to his flat. She had been preparing it for some time, ordering a new casket to keep at his home, so he might find some respite away from the theatre. She wasn't sure if using the place where they'd taken him, right there on that exact same pianoforte, was a good idea, but it was all they had for now. The theatre was doing well but it was by no means wealthy enough to procure a similar separate establishment for Nicolas. Not yet, anyway. 

He winced once as she laid him on the red coverlet of his bed, and bid the mortal physic to strip him of his clothes so he might be examined. Silently Nicolas yanked the man to him and sank his fangs into the junction of his shoulder and neck, feeding with the vigor and hunger of someone who cared not for taste nor quality, but merely the existence of sustenance at all. He gave a sigh as he fell back with the corpse atop him, and finally opened clear eyes to look at her. 

"Ma cherie Eleni," he breathed, beyond handsome when he smiled. He shoved the corpse away from him, and off the bed, and motioned for her to join him. 

She lay beside him on top of the brocade, the two of them holding hands and staring up at the ceiling. 

"What did he do to you?" She asked. 

"Don't let Félix give me to him. Not ever," Nicolas said quietly. She looked at him but he was closing his eyes, tired and letting the blood work through him. There was a quiet defeated resignation about him and she knew him to be lucid. He could more easily do it, when it was just the two of them and she grounded him in this world rather than whatever realm he heard in his head. 

The cackling vengeful fledgling marshaling all the Dark Arts against his maker had long gone. Nicolas' delusions had been wiped away with Lestat's departure and his increasing familiarity with their powers. He tested their limits every day but he had never spoken of that grand dark underworld again, underground streets with blood fountains and secret passageways of power, a dream that could one day be possible. Nicolas could have been a zealot at the head of an army, in the Crusades. Instead he sank himself into ever greater intricacies and manipulations of the arts. 

The recent recruits had dissatisfied him; didn't share the same passion for the music that he did. They cared more for their city, their lives, their petty jealousies and vanities. Content to be macabre mummers, they constantly were bridled by the composer for not developing their acting or music further. But Eleni could hardly protest this preoccupation with the real world. Her dealings with the business of the theatre made her increasingly familiar and comfortable with the era, and she could count some mortals her friends, perhaps even a lover or two. 

Nicolas had withdrawn from that as completely as he was able, and thrown himself into the very music that set off his uncontrollable fits and episodes of madness. Worse still, she saw him struggle less and less against slipping into that whirl of chaos, safe from the pain of the world. And it was less apparent to her whether he was doing it helplessly or whether he chose to step into that maelstrom sometimes. She wasn't sure if he himself could tell her the answer if she dared to ask. 

"Félix has to watch you. You know how the world is sometimes. Out of joint. Just beyond your reach," she whispered, squeezing his hand. 

"Félix doesn't protect me any longer, if he ever did," Nicolas replied. "He is Armand's creature."

"He loves you. We all do," she said. 

"Then he loves Armand far more. And I would not welcome his 'love' if that is what I have endured."

Had Félix inflicted Nicolas' wounds then? The man was fervent and almost mindless in his stoic devotion. But if he decided that to protect Nicolas he would have to cede to Armand, then of course Nicolas would have felt betrayed. Eleni bit her lip.

Nicolas opened his eyes and looked around. "Why did you bring me here?"

"It is your home."

"I have no home. This is a house that was bought to keep me in the dark. I already have a theatre for that."

"Armand doesn't come here."

Nicolas sighed. "Do you think he is the worst I must contend with? I don't fancy destroying my furniture by bursting into flames."

"That's why I made special preparations. Come see," Eleni said, unable to keep the eagerness out of her voice. She sat up and helped Nicolas off the bed, catching him in her arms as he stumbled and fell, bent over from a weak and pained back. "What's the matter? Do you need more blood?"

Nicolas shook his head. "Just time."

"Nicki, what happened? What did he do?!"

"Shh, shh, show me what you have prepared," Nicolas said, leaning on the wall and taking shallow breaths. Eleni watched his naked chest rise and fall, the skin pale and smooth and hairless. He looked so young this way, and too often she forgot that he was barely a man, twenty years and one, if they reckoned he and Lestat spent a glorious Parisian year together in bliss and peace and life. They had not had a fledgling at Les Innocents in quite some time, and she was more accustomed to ancients with the faces of youths by now, if Armand was anything to go by.

"It's this way," she murmured, letting him take his time. It was clear his back was bothering him, from the way he leaned against the walls and tried to support himself. They came to a small closet and she opened the door. In it was a sturdy black box that looked like a leather traveling trunk, but when she lifted the lid, the interior was cushioned with scarlet satin. She held a key and a padlock out to him. 

"It locks from the inside," she told him, waiting on his reaction. He stared at her hands. "It's not enough for you to lie down straight but it ought to be comfortable enough on your side, with enough room for your violin if you want. This way it does not look like a coffin either."

He was very still and gentle when he took her hands in his and plucked out the key and padlock, then pulled her to him in a fierce embrace. She could feel him shake with emotion as he whispered in her ear, "thank you, my darling."

He released her quickly, making her take a few steps back, and surveyed the box again with more attention, as if actually evaluating a purchase. 

"One could probably post this with no difficulty," he commented as he felt how thickly padded the satin lining was. He looked in the little pocket for keeping things, and gave the little mirror in the lid a fake smile, thin and stretched on his face. 

"You're not thinking of leaving us, are you, Nicolas?" she asked, afraid of the answer. The rawness of his naked back faced her and she saw his shoulders tense, then relax from the pain it caused. "Nicki?"

"Not like this," he replied, but he was looking down at the trunk and not at her. He turned around and gave her a small smile, a real one that perked up the corners of his lips and made him look particularly handsome. "Thank you for what you have done."

"You and I are the only ones who know. So do not let Félix catch you sleeping in here. I know you can't always control yourself, so perhaps it's better if he finds you right before dawn, but if you can, hide yourself in here before he arrives so he thinks you have returned to the theatre without him. Then come to me at once the next night. D'accord?"

"I will try. It's, it's not always easy," Nicolas said, looking off with slightly unfocused eyes. He was almost afraid to think of the music, afraid for either the storm or the silence to descend upon him and capture him in their endless hunt. He needed both, and yet could barely command either. Only Armand could lay stake to that claim and Nicolas did not relish his methods. 

Eleni studied him closely, then nodded and helped him back to the bedroom, where she pulled a fresh shirt over his raw skin and let it hang loosely while she searched for a new pair of breeches.

"We ought to get more of the black culottes. Then I don't have to keep changing them for the bloodstains," Nicolas said, collapsing onto his stomach again and watching her pulling out drawers. The red frock coat, clean now, hung in the armoire like a wound, and Nicolas turned his eyes away to focus on the black lace of her dress. "Is that why you always wear black?"

"I am in mourning for my immortal family," Eleni said after a pause, inspecting what might be a stain on a dark blue pair of silk breeches. "I can only hope Armand scattered their ashes thoroughly."

"Is that why you care for me so?" Nicolas asked, looking up at her now. He wrinkled his nose at the blue but said nothing when she put it down.

"What do you mean? We all feel great affection for you, Nicolas. You created a way for us to enter the light of this age, a framework we could understand." She sat down, the bed dipping slightly as she bent to stroke his curls. 

"Yes, I know, I am useful to you for so long as you still need my little amusements," Nicolas sneered. "Félix protects me in much the same spirit, though he thinks of the poor madmen from his monastery more often than not. Dulot, the others, all lost souls he's learned to handle and bring down. If I didn't make such devilry he'd think I was tormented by visions from God, the way he thought they were. And yet he still thinks what worked on them would work on me."

"Really? Did he tell you that? Does he call you by their names?"

"No, thank God, I don't have to listen to that rot," Nicolas smirked. "But anyway-"

"Then how did you know? Did you read this thoughts, Nicki?" Her hand stilled and he tried nudging her to keep stroking his hair. "Nicki?"

"No, of course not," he huffed. "I'm just a fledgling, as you all keep reminding me. How would I know how to do that?"

"Then how did you know what Félix thought? Did he talk to you about his past?" Eleni asked. 

Nicolas frowned, bit his lip, then looked uncertain. "I don't know. He must have mentioned it then," he murmured, trying to remember. He'd simply known. Félix was the one who had told Armand to hold Nicolas tightly in one of his fits, to narrow all the static in the world to just the space between his arms to create a tightly controlled supernova. 

"Can you read my thoughts? Right now?" She looked him in the eye. 

"No, I don't even know how!" Nicolas said impatiently. "We are getting off track. I don't care for these vaunted Dark Gifts you prattle about. I am done with gifts." He looked away furiously. "I just wanted to know if, oh, never mind!"

The silence was suffocating, and she withdrew her hand from his hair. She knelt down and replayed the conversation in her head, before they had ever talked about what she had begun to suspect were twitches and starts of his own powers, used unawares. 

"I'm sorry," she said, bringing a fingertip up to meet his. He allowed it, but didn't look at her. "You're right. All that matters is what we make now. And what we decide we are to each other." She kissed him on his temple. "I want to take care of you. You remind me of someone in my family. He had dark curly hair too, and many questions we did not know how to answer. I left him lonely, but we loved him with all our heart, for he was strong in spirit, like a blazing fire."

"Poetic words," Nicolas murmured, and Eleni felt foolish at once, to be talking of her little brother like that, but it had been true. Niko had an unquenchable curiosity and dark eyes that grew stormy and angry when his knowledge isolated him and he felt like the enjoyment was leeched out of the activities they once shared. She'd found him in the olive grove crying and she told him he was too big for this place, and that he must be patient with them before he made his way in the world. He'd been ten and she would enter into Darkness the year after. When he was only thirty he died in a fire at the library in Athens. He'd been saving the scrolls and books. She was with Les Innocents already by then, and grateful their sabbats allowed her wailing and tears to flow freely. 

"And you won't leave me?" Nicolas asked. 

"Not if you leave me first," she teased, drawing a smile from him. "We leave together if we do. I promise."

"I promise too," Nicolas said, and finally let himself rest. 

 

It was nearly two weeks before Nicolas could regularly walk on his own. Eleni had visited him every night at his flat with some kind of mortal for dinner, and he did not even pick up his violin because of the pain. 

With this play as the longest running, they needed a new one, and Nicolas figured sitting at a harpsichord in the main performance hall or lounging on a settee would not strain him overmuch. His two weeks of convalescence were full of blessed quiet and amusing visits with Eleni. He did not have a fit even once. She attributed it to his being out of the theatre. He said it was because Armand was absent. 

So it was to his dismay that he discovered Armand backstage with the curtains opened, sorting through props as he took inventory, like some kind of manic fox, darting over and under boxes and equipment. 

"M'sieur," he said in greeting, proud that his voice did not shake. Armand looked up, his beautiful angelic face expressionless as usual, a list and a masque in one hand, a quill in the other. 

"Nicolas, it is good to see you about," Armand said with half-lidded eyes as he looked at Nicolas up and down. 

"de Lenfent, if you please," Nicolas ground out. "Is it old age that's making you require my reminders, what is it, twenty times now? Is that what I have to look forward to in the centuries to come, oh great Master?"

"If you even last that long," muttered Armand, then looked surprised to have said it. He inclined his head. "Will you be working on something new tonight?"

"Yes," Nicolas said, nodding, "I need the harpsichord for this one."

"Will it require new scrims?" Armand gestured to the tattered backdrops, only two of which were restored and which they reused. 

"I need a nighttime view, an Italianate garden, something with ornamental shrubs, and maybe a pier, I don't really care what style, maybe Turkish or at least Mediterranean. Something foreign," Nicolas said dismissively, not looking for Armand's carefully schooled expression of blankness, when inside he was seething with anger. Armand was tasked with painting the scrims. He had volunteered for the task without explanation, of course, and Nicolas had not only tossed out vague ideas as if ordering hats and heraldry, but he had the nerve to choose scenes so close to Armand's secret pain! But he could not know. He could never know how vulnerable he could make Armand, how this one fledgling could confound and tempt his self-control time and again when half the time he was a frenetic and frothing madman. 

"Do you mind?" Nicolas asked irritably, finally looking up from the blank pages before him. "Do you have to be there?"

"Yes. There are practical matters to attend to that make the staging of your little scratchings even possible, M'sieur de Lenfent," Armand replied. "Continue. I shall make no sound or interfere unless you ask."

Nicolas huffed, then sat down at the bench and pulled out his violin. 

In truth, it was always a pleasure to attend Nicolas' composing. The music came out of the violin already made, and it was as if Nicolas were only transcribing something he heard, which might have been true. Armand had never seen him return to an earlier passage or correct anything. The notes he wrote down were the ones that would be copied out, sans corrections or revisions. Everything Nicolas composed and wrote down was in its final and perfect state, and the violin or harpsichord-playing he used to test out the music sounded as if he were learning a pre-composed piece rather than plucking notes from thin air. 

Sometimes Nicolas would play an entire score without pause, an entire evening's music in one sitting and with as much perfection and skill as his vampire powers and raw natural talent would produce. The rest of the night would be silence as he wrote down note for note the melody and accompaniment that he had just transcribed from the ether of his mind using the bow of his violin or the hammer of the harpsichord. It sent a delicious thrill through Armand every time, to be so close to this crucible of creation. When Nicolas was fully engrossed in it and let the music take him, his tight and guarded expression unfolded and his body unfurled, opening to soak in and transmit out the music in his head that wrapped around him constantly. And briefly Armand would get a glimpse of the tender young ingenue, full of sarcasm for his walls to protect the garden of hope and faith within. No wonder he had caught Lestat's eye. No one like him would have survived long by himself. Not even as a mortal.

But inevitably the music would stop and the noise and silence would fill Nicolas' mind and drown him, making him flail and lash out and forget who he had once been or was or would be. And he would be the shattered tortured writhing madman, whose walls they broke and whose garden they trampled and whose thoughts they kept and raped for their own entertainment. Armand knew there would be a point when the music would no longer make the madness worthwhile. He had the hope of training the madness before that happened, to have a mad dog recognize its master. He'd heard it being done, and he'd known it himself under Santino in Rome. The first time he'd given in to those white hands and kisses after so much darkness he didn't even know if Marius had been real--Armand stopped suddenly, realizing he hadn't moved or logged inventory for quite a while. He looked up and saw Nicolas staring at him. 

"Can I help you, M'sieur?" He asked politely, ever quiet, ever politic and unshakeable. 

"What? No, no, I'm fine," Nicolas said absently, looking back down at his violin as if waking from the same reverie. He gave a Armand a second glance and looked back down again when caught.

Armand was certain he'd kept his thoughts guarded. This was surely a coincidence. Nicolas picked up the instrument and Armand straightened to watch him place it carefully on his shoulder, and tune it, and, and- he felt his knees weakening, and he gripped the box in front of him for support. That melody. No, not that melody, surely it could not have passed into common knowledge!

But Nicolas was paying him no attention, and Armand felt the pearls beneath his hands shatter and tinkle against the floor, and he felt Riccardo embracing him and pulling him laughing into a boat with the other boys, and Bianca sitting patiently as she sang and he lay back against her legs, the silk and satin of her dress deliciously smooth against his soft skin, the other boys asleep in the barco in the noonday sun, and her lips parting as they kissed. He choked and staggered, knocking several boxes to one side, and still Nicolas did not stop this surgically precise slice that went into Armand's heart and blossomed with longing and secret pain and loss!

"Stop!" Armand cried, yanking Nicolas' hands apart, making him hold the violin away from the bow. Nicolas' eyes flung open and he looked at Armand with confusion, then, yes, there was the fear again, but Nicolas only gripped his bow and violin more tightly, trying to bring them together. An ugly smile was spreading on his face, full of malice, and in a moment of surprise he kicked Armand directly in the gut, smashing him against the stage wall. He danced a little away from the stunned coven master and continued in the song, but it was changing into something mocking, something like a caterwauling tune from a market fair in the square, and Armand saw the children running and they were in his care and they were being cut down over and over and over, and he screamed and flung himself at Nicolas, pinning him down by the wrists and forcing him to release his instrument. He straddled the fledgling, banging his wrists and his head against the floor to stun him, but Nicolas only snarled and bucked up wordlessly, trying to get free. 

"How?! How could you know?" He demanded, forcing Nicolas to look at him. The violinist's eyes finally focused on him and Armand watched as a blood tear fell on the fledgling's white cheek. They looked at one another, surprised, but Nicolas reacted faster, shoving him off and into the stage wall again before dealing him a series of punches that reminded him that Nicolas held Magnus' blood and strength after all, when he chose to use it. He coughed and tried to push Nicolas off, but the music was still in his head somehow and it was nothing but pure misery lancing his heart and he wanted it to stop, please, he didn't want to remember! A sharp pain in his shoulder, then another in his leg, brought him back to reality, and he dealt his assailant a heavy blow to the face, a black bruise forming instantly around his eye and cheekbone. 

"You are never to play that again!" Armand roared, as he repaired his dislocated shoulder. He staggered-his leg was broken in two, and Nicolas was shaking his head trying to focus his vision again. "Never again!" He was weeping, he knew, his vision stained and swimming in red, and it gave Nicolas power over him, but he could still stop this, could make sure he didn't do it again. He grabbed the violin just out of the fledgling's reach and held it over the candle flame. Nicolas reached out for it, frozen and as pinned in mid-lunge was a butterfly against a board. 

"Don't," he said, his voice surprisingly normal and quiet. "I'll stop. Don't burn it."

Chest heaving, trying to stop crying, Armand glared at Nicolas furiously, making the vampire flinch. 

"Nicki?" Damnit. Eleni. He collapsed backwards against the stage, tossing the violin into Nicolas' arms as he wiped at his face furiously. He didn't want them to see him weep. They could not know his weakness! 

Nicolas clutched the violin to his chest like an infant, and his lips moved though Armand could not make out anything. Armand's chest felt tight, like his strings had been drawn in and Nicolas was doing the tying, and if he was already thinking like that what did it mean? He watched as the fledgling picked up the bow from the floor, and tensed, afraid and dreading what would emerge next. But Nicolas looked at the instrument and then stared at Armand. 

"What happened here?" Eleni asked, but Armand felt pinned by Nicki's gaze, flayed open for him with his pain for the feast. He swallowed, and tried to stand, but his leg was broken and despite himself he winced as he held his knee and twisted, then tried to straighten himself. 

"Nicki? Nicolas?" Eleni asked. "You're hurt!"

"Never mind me," Armand muttered, but to his surprise and annoyance she pretended not to have heard. 

"Does it hurt anywhere else?" Eleni asked, stroking the puffy skin around Nicki's cheekbone, making him flinch and breaking his trance. He blinked, looking at her as if seeing her for the first time, and frowned in confusion. 

"I was just, what," he muttered softly, looking uncertainly at his violin and back up at Armand. 

"What were you playing?" Eleni asked, casting a wary eye at Armand. 

"Yes, where did you hear that melody, M de Lenfent?" Armand asked testily, limping up to him. "Hmm?"

"I, I don't know, I was thinking of Naples and, and," Nicolas trailed off. "But I don't recall my mother's voice!"

"Your mother was from Naples?" Eleni asked in surprise. It was a testament to how bewildered the violinist was to be discussing his mortal past. 

"No more lies. Tell me, where did you hear it? You didn't compose that, that is a very old song!" Armand said, grasping Nicolas by the shoulders, feeling at once petty and small. "How could you know it?!"

"Armand-" Eleni began, but he knew she would not stop him. 

"I don't know!" Nicolas wailed, completely lost. "A woman was singing and it was peaceful and my brothers were laughing. There was water. And sunlight. Noon sun. The silk was soft." Nicki's eyes took on a dreamy look, but Armand made a choking sound and backed away.

"You are not to play that song again," he decided. "It is unsuitable for the stage. You do not know its history."

"I don't even remember it now," Nicolas grumbled, looking down at his hands. He gave a sigh and turned his back on Armand, muttering to himself as he returned to the harpsichord. "It's all just there somewhere." He gestured to the air around him as he turned back to the work.

Armand narrowed his eyes, uncertain whether Nicolas was telling the truth. What about the attack afterwards then? Was that plucked from Armand's mind, his own self-hatred for what had happened to all those unfortunates?

"But, I thought Nicolas only had one brother," Eleni murmured softly. 

"It makes no difference now that he is Dead," Armand whispered, and retreated to lick his wounds. He did not return to listen to Nicolas compose for some time.


	7. Brutish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicolas breaks.
> 
> This chapter contains: Mental Instability, Mental Health Issues, Mental Breakdown, Mental Disintegration, feral!Nicki, sane!Nicki, Blackmail, Sexual Assault, BDSM, Scarification, Bondage, Cock and Ball Torture, Object Insertion (in more ways than you think), Torture, Sexual Slavery, Rape, Nonconsensual Anal Sex, Forced Orgasm, Emotional Manipulation, Psychological Torture, Master-Slave Relationship, Overstimulation, Multiple Orgasms, Begging, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Past Suicide Attempt, Figging, Humiliation

After Justine's "death" and their agreement, Armand began the first of his visits to train Nicolas to the idea of their association. He was by no means the first fledgling Armand had broken, and would surely not be the last, but he would relish this chance to duel with such a creative and sharp opponent, albeit one who would ultimately lose. 

"Come in," Nicolas called when Armand knocked on his door. He was writing and writing and writing constantly now, and it didn't stop, just couldn't stop, and then Armand was there and holding his inkwell away from him and he blinked and stopped and blinked again. "Bon soir."

"Five plays and one remarkable overture," Armand said, looking angelic and beautiful with his cupid's bow lips and his immaculate black attire. When he had no public business he seemed to prefer black, just like old times under Les Innocents. Nicolas suppressed a shudder, thinking of the planning and demolition process for the site instead. He shrugged and dipped his quill in the inkwell in Armand's hands, only to have him snatch the quill as well. 

"I thought you wanted me to write!" Nicolas said hotly. "I'm writing now!"

This wouldn't do. They had kissed, for the first time of Nicki's own albeit coerced will, but he did not think of Armand beyond a Muse to connect to through such a connection. He came to him with ideas and talked and shared the music and somehow just having Armand listening to it helped, but that was all. He had no other interest, or rather, he permitted no other interest in the coven master who had ordered his torture beneath Les Innocents, as Nicolas was so fond of reminding him. Uncouth and savage nights as a vagabond angel in the Devil's Garden. 

Armand would break Nicolas de Lenfent down and teach him to need Armand, to be nothing without him with every breath he took, to obey him without thinking, or at least torture himself if he went against Armand's wishes. If sex with the young violinist was what was required, Armand could think of no easier and more pleasant task than outright torture. Then again, those could be merged. He intended to train Nicolas wholesale, after all.

"You must rest occasionally," Armand said gently and reasonably, looking and sounding the part of the coven master as he put away the writing utensils. Nicolas' hands twitched for them, and then went still as he watched Armand sprinkle sand over the pages, neatly dumping them back into the container before stacking them carefully. He squeezed his thumb nervously, first the left, then the right, fidgeting with the notes unwritten and unplayed. 

"If you do not pace yourself you risk being too weak to write when true inspiration strikes," Armand advised. 

"The ideas themselves drive me. I don't need any energy beyond that," Nicolas tried to explain, but Armand took his hands in his own, skin smooth and silken, and with the gentlest of touches coaxed those fists open. He brushed against Nicolas' fine fingers with his own, tracing their outlines and lines with such delicacy it made Nicolas shudder with how sensitive they made his hands. It was as if Armand intended to claim him through his hands. 

"I, I feel fine," Nicolas said, snatching his hands away, and an almost hurt look crossed Armand's perfect face. Guilt shot through Nicki, then fear. He'd asked Armand to be his Muse, for unfettered access. The little devil could take that away at any time and he would be left with the drought of notes and ideas and the blank emptiness would fall on him forever and ever and-

"Nicolas. Come back to me," Armand said, and he snapped back to a stern gaze. The coven master sighed and Nicolas marveled. Here was a centuries-old vampire in the body of a youth just growing into adulthood, barely out of his middling years of apprenticeship or journeymanhood. And yet no one questioned his authority, not even mortals. Armand's bearing was impeccable and unimpeachable. He was from another plane. Something within Nicki railed against this predetermination like an allergy to his system but it was when Armand was corrective that he almost instinctively flinched. He did not forget the coldness under Les Innocents. 

"Have you fed tonight? No, of course you haven't," Armand said almost in disgust, and Nicolas wanted to snarl, to recall Armand's preoccupation with making him work, with the bleeding pain of Justine's loss. He had tried to search for her, but a maker cannot find his own fledgling and all his hearing would not let him detect her in the theatre. He dreaded Armand's reaction if he was caught whispering her name in all the little secret corners he had found. It was convenient to be thought mad, sometimes. He didn't even have to explain the mud and ash and dust stains to Eleni. She just took one look at him and sighed as she turned to his armoire. 

"You cannot keep this pace up forever," Armand said, grasping Nicolas by the shoulders, and it was all he could do not to twitch backwards. This would trap him. Armand was dangerous. What had he been thinking? And his stupid perfect face was so close and his breath was ghosting against Nicki's ear and who the hell talked like that?

"What do you suggest then, M'sieur?" Nicolas sneered, trying to keep his voice from shaking. God, the fear was still in him, and he couldn't even remember why! Something had happened under Les Innocents with Armand and he could hardly bear to be in the same room except out of desperation. "You cannot have me rest and work to the bidding of my inspiration."

"You beseeched me to serve as your Muse," Armand said softly, amusement in his voice. "Will you not heed my advice?"

"I fail to see the sense in it," Nicolas replied, proud that his voice was steady. Armand drew back and grasped him by the wrists, sending a current of alarm and fear through him. 

"Will you permit me to show you?" he asked, so gentle, Cupid's smile, what the hell was happening, Nicolas couldn't understand this solicitousness and all he wanted was the work and Justine and Lestat and now none of them were sufficient and the only blaze he'd gotten was from Armand!

"Will it hurt?" he asked warily, because they both knew he needed this. 

"Only if you resist. I wouldn't do anything to break your trust, assuming I have it at all," Armand said. Good. At least he had no illusions about that. Nicolas nodded, and Armand brought him to his feet, still holding onto his wrists. "Stand in the center of the room."

The last thing he wanted to do was turn his back, but he permitted Armand to direct him to the center of his dressing room turned study. It was in a safe place. This was a main hallway. Others were here. They would hear the screaming if there were any. It was his own room. 

Armand brought his hands around behind his back and quickly laced them together with leather ties, making Nicolas tense immediately. The last time he'd been tied, Félix had whipped his back raw so that strips of flesh hung off. Nicolas hadn't been able to walk for a week. He hadn't been able to play the violin for a week more. The entire time was a blur, nothing more than pain and betrayal and begging Félix not to obey Armand. 

"Relax. You've done nothing wrong," Armand whispered in the shell of his ear. He stared fixedly at the opposite wall and thought he should hang something there for visitors to comment on. 

"How is this supposed to help me?" he asked, but his voice had gone dry because Armand was caressing his neck, all those parts bruised and beaten and bitten and abused when he was taken, all his fears centered on those veins. His shirt was being opened, more of his throat bared, and Armand made a clicking sound in his ear as he gently pushed Nicolas down, bidding him to kneel. Of course, he was too tall for Armand to easily minister. 

"You need control. You have a wildness that is alluring but that will ultimately undo you if you permit it to run unchecked." Armand tugged on the leather strings and Nicolas realized he had been twisting his hands in them. "You need restraint and guidance. Why else come to me? It is not any fire you claim. You have enough of that, child. It is the salvation I offer to ensure the flame does not burn out."

"You've lost your flock, so you're to be my unholy priest instead?" Nicolas asked scornfully, and gasped as Armand wrenched his face upwards, exposing the long line of his neck. A current of fear and arousal ran through him and he shuddered. 

"You know what I say is true, boy," Armand declared, and a shiver went through Nicolas at the word. Armand's eyebrows rose but he said nothing. He resumed caressing Nicolas' neck, then the delicate bones of his shoulders and his clavicle, touch ghosting and never quite enough. Armand had every right to call him a child. He had two hundred years on Nicolas. But the way he said it, like ownership, like complete control. It sent a nameless feeling through Nicki and he could not place it. It was nothing he had felt before, not with Lestat or with Justine. 

He shivered as the linen of his shirt was untucked and drawn over the skin on his chest, up over his shoulders and his head, jostling his curls and untying the ribbon in his hair. Armand let it puddle around Nicki's wrists and he was relieved for something to hold on to. 

Armand walked into his frame of vision, a beautiful sight from below, and Nicolas felt suddenly weak before his presence, kneeling there before the one thing he had found to soothe the raw pain and emptiness of his work.

Cold hands touched his shoulders and traced his jawline, bidding him turn his chin up, and he obliged, watching Armand's benevolent expression carefully. The same hands ran down his biceps, toned and flexed against the leather strings, and then down his sides, making him shiver again. 

"Ticklish?" Armand asked, but Nicolas didn't answer, feeling strange as he tried to understand what was happening. Suddenly Armand pinched both his nipples, hard, and he gave a yelp, staggering a little on his knees as he tried to get away. But Armand grabbed him by the neck and squeezed, not cutting off his air completely but enough to make it uncomfortable and constrictive. 

"Ngk," Nicolas sounded, looking up at him in confusion. Those brown eyes were steady and the lips were in a firm and stern line, and Nicolas suddenly felt like Armand's hand on his neck was the only thing stopping him from drowning. Oh god, it was true. He needed this asshole more than he thought. 

"When I ask you a question, I expect you to answer it," Armand said testily. His gaze softened. "How else am I to help you, are we to work together?"

Nicki nodded as much as Armand's hand allowed. 

"So. Ticklish?"

Nicolas shook his head. 

A cold finger traced his belt and traveled up his chest, circling both his nipples before slicing a thin line into his collarbone, making him wince. Armand bent, licking a straight line across before it healed. It made Nicolas shiver, and he reeled suddenly, feeling dizzy from this intrusion. He had asked for this. He wanted to learn. Hadn't he? And he wanted more. Why did Armand only give him ghost touches? The barest of caresses. Surely he knew, if he was asking- and thoughts fled his mind as Armand made a thin slice in his neck with his fingernails, laving at the skin and making Nicolas moan helplessly. He released his neck and stepped back, looking down and smirking. Nicolas glanced down and realized that his breeches were tenting, his erection harder than he could remember with anticipation. Armand toed it gently with his shoe, sending shocks of feeling up Nicki's spine and making him choke and moan softly. 

"Perhaps the lesson must conclude today," Armand said, disappearing from Nicki's point of view. He panted softly, trying to come down from the hypersensitive state of arousal the coven master had brought him to, and therefore was barely aware that his wrists had been untied. 

"Turn around. You appear distressed. I shall not intrude, but I will know if you touch yourself, and I will refuse to aid if you do," Armand promised solemnly. 

"Wh-what the hell are you-"

"It is a long and arduous process, reining in one's appetites. It is dangerous to restrict blood, but we can use other pleasures as proxies. Same time tomorrow night then." He nodded curtly and left before Nicolas could emerge from his surprise. 

What the hell did Armand think he was doing, laying hands on Nicolas like this? He had made clear he wanted no such association. The kiss of before, it had been more like a seal of agreement than anything amorous. As much as Armand had asked and demanded Nicolas' love, the violinist had been quite clear about his refusal. 

The following night Armand entered without knocking, and found Nicolas in a frenzy. He watched him in silence for a few minutes, his nimble fingers delicately scratching out the notes and letters in a tidy scholarly hand. The rest of him looked like a madman plucked from an asylum. The collar of his shirt kept falling down to expose his shoulder, for he had not retied it, and he pulled it up absently every so often. His hair was loose and wild but he paid it no mind, focused as he was entirely on the work. Armand tilted his head to one side, watching those boyish lips muttering soundlessly to themselves as if the sanity inside were trying to find its way out, only to be garbled and muted in the translated expression. 

In a swift movement Armand pulled the chair out with Nicolas still in it, snatching the quill from his hands and knocking him to his knees with one swift movement. Nicolas made a startled noise, then snarled, trying to struggle, only to find Armand suddenly behind him and binding his wrists together. It was the wrists that did it and too much to hope for that Armand didn't know or that he himself hadn't burned that into Nicolas somewhere in Les Innocents. 

"What do you think this is?" Nicolas asked quietly, under his breath, and Armand was dismayed to hear that his voice was clear and even despite his appearance. "Are you to assault me with pleasures of the flesh that I no longer need, least of all from you, and tell me it is for discipline and endurance? I heard better lies in the nursery."

"So you think yourself not quite the fool you appear to be," Armand said, making a clicking sound with his teeth as he forced Nicolas to kneel, a warning hand clasped firmly around his neck and pressing on his Adam's apple as he pushed downwards while he kicked Nicki's calves. He went down with a soft grunt, the wood shaking beneath his knees with the impact. "This is no less than you deserve, and you take to it so well."

Nicolas felt something looping through his bonds and looked behind him, realizing that Armand had tied him to one leg of the heavy armoire. He tested the leather string only to have his head whipped around by an unholy sting of fire on his cheek, pitching him sideways. He couldn't put his hands out to stop his fall, and he landed on his shoulder. Armand had slapped him. Or rather, Armand had backhanded him. He had felt the cut of the ring into his cheek, and could smell the blood from his cheek. 

"What now?" He asked testily, and when he saw the blade withdrawn from Armand's coat, a thin stiletto dagger hardly worth mentioning in size but exquisite in the workmanship of its hilt, the fear of Les Innocents came back to him, the nameless crippling terror of being lost and damned and doomed for all he had done in his life. And he would have to welcome it, wouldn't he?

He righted himself, digging his heels against the floorboards as he backed against the armoire, not caring how it looked as the coven master approached. The angelic face was expressionless as ever, but the shine of the blade danced against the candlelight and Nicolas couldn't stop himself from breathing quickly as he watched the knife near him. It slit through his shirt, opening it up and letting the panels it had cut fall away so that the bare skin of his torso was exposed, only the sleeves, now bunched at his wrists, left behind. 

He couldn't suppress the shivers as Armand let the point of the dagger drift and ghost across his skin, the dark pink of his nipples, the tight muscles of his abdomen and the ridges of ribs that showed against his skin. 

"Good luck explaining that expense to Eleni," he muttered, and Armand slapped him again, drawing an unwilling whimper from him for the pain. He shifted, wanting to get away from Armand instinctively, but the ties held him fast and all he could do was draw his knees close to his chest and try to turn away from the little demon. 

Without warning the dagger flashed and he felt the quicksilver edge of stinging pain sink into his side, and take up residence there. Armand was watching his expression carefully as the dagger carved its way slowly through Nicki's chest, elegant loops bleeding and shuddering to close as the blade went over them and widened. 

"What the hell-" Nicolas began, his voice strained and still trying to figure out Armand's intentions, but the blade left him and the dagger bit down sharply, Armand twisting it particularly viciously to make Nicolas choke on his words. He panted, trying to breathe through the pain, to focus, but Armand kept back handing him. The blows were making his head spin and it was only the pain of the dagger that was bringing him back. 

"Nothing comes out of that mouth except 'please, Master' do you hear me? The work you may transcribe but so long as we are alone together you must remember what your place is and what it is you deserve, and no one needs to hear the words of a madman," Armand whispered, his words coming fast and over Nicki's open mouth, his lips close enough to kiss. "Do you understand? Nod if you do."

Nicolas' brow furrowed in anger and he gathered his breath to let out a scream, to call for Eleni or Félix or anyone for help, but his mouth filled with the tattered remnants of his shirt, muffling his sounds and stretching his lips and cheeks as Armand tucked in more and more fabric, filling his mouth until it bulged. He choked, eyes tearing up with blood, trying to retch and push the fabric out with his tongue, but Armand had shoved too much in and too deep. 

"Do you see? That's so unattractive, and now you won't be able to even beg me for mercy," Armand said, and Nicolas did not have time to wonder what he meant before a burning, continuous pain skirted across his chest and took up residence there as if hot coals were being slowly and constantly raked across him. His feet and legs kicked out of their own accord, scrabbling for purchase against the pain and he struggled to scream around the gag. His neck was taut with pain and he beat his head against the armoire, unable to stand it as Armand slowly peeled away strips of skin, licking the blood off the other side before discarding it and doing the same for the wounds on his chest. He seemed to take great pleasure in doing it slowly, and Nicolas suppressed great gulping sobs of pain, unwilling to give Armand the tears. 

Time slowed. His wrists pulled futilely at the ties and he had twisted every which way he could to get out, knocked his heels against the floor, banged his head against the armoire, anything for help, but no one came. Armand sat on his legs and with the attentiveness of a schoolboy calmly and slowly carved and peeled strips of bleeding skin and then flesh from Nicki's chest. His eyes were clenched shut and he didn't have the luxury of gritting his teeth, but he could still remind Armand how the task was performed on the unwilling. How was this supposed to help him? It was nothing but pure sadism. It was an excuse for a power trip. He felt blood well up in his throat, sick with suffering and nauseous with the feeling of his flesh being carved away like a piece of butchered meat, but he swallowed it down as best he could, though the cloth gag was increasingly soaked. Nicolas was never going to let Armand tie him up ever again--and then the knife ceased to move. He panted, gag bloody and leaking with his drool and vomit, and stiffened as Armand palmed his cock through his breeches, coaxing it to awaken. 

A helpless chuckle of disbelief escaped him. What the hell? What twisted-and then Armand held a small mirror before him, allowing Nicolas to see the bloody scar in the shape of an A on his chest, marking him for Armand. It was beautiful in a macabre fashion, the serifs elegantly curved, and it distracted him from the neat twist of Armand's hand that drew him out of his breeches and began to slide up and down his cock. His stared at himself, his eyes wide and red-rimmed with blood, his hair wild and his face ashen and haggard. Who was this wretch staring back?

"Before you ask, these will fade with time, yes, and our gifted blood will heal it soon enough," Armand said, gripping him a little harder, letting the blood on his hands swipe over the head, smiling at the unwilling moan he forced from his captive. 

He traced the wounds in time with his strokes, making Nicolas whimper in confusion as the pain and the pleasure courses through him equally. He remembered feeling like this, somewhere, somehow. His body remembered this at least, remembered belonging to Armand in this way, and he closed his eyes tightly and thought he saw crops of terror across a barren plane. 

"But you and I know they will always be there," Armand said, as Nicolas began to pant and moan, the pain and pleasure alternating in their intensity as he writhed beneath the coven master. He tried to twist away with his hips and his feet, but he felt barely able to command his breathing for the fear and the confusion. And the noise kept pressing in and the pressure kept growing behind his eyes. "For you need me for the work. And that makes you mine to command. And if you ever dare refuse me, it won't be these paltry pleasures you miss," he promised Nicolas with a particularly hard twist of his cock, making him moan because by now all sensation had blended together and he was thrusting his hips helplessly forward, desperate for the only thing that would distract him from the pain. "You will wish you had even my scorn to draw close to you in the cold nights."

Finally Armand rose, making Nicolas whimper at the sudden abandonment of touch, but he knelt beside his straining cock and held down his hips. 

"But if you obey me. And if you do as I say and you follow my rules, I can show you how to make the world right." He let go of Nicki's erratically thrusting hips and held his tossing head by the chin, focusing his attention by digging the dagger deep into the apex of the A, right beside his heart. "But I require obedience. So hold still or I shall stop."

Nicolas stared at him. Was this a way out or a threat? He didn't understand. This wasn't what he asked for, he didn't understand, this bewildering insane storm of sensation and command and-the dagger dug deep into his chest and his breath stopped, and he froze, looking down at the blade rising from his chest. Armand had left it there, protruding from him. It jutted out at the same angle as his bloody cock. 

"Good boy," Armand said, prompting a suppressed shiver to run through Nicki. And then he had no more thoughts as Armand took him in his mouth, and the breath went out of him and his eyes rolled in his head as his world burst white-hot with something not quite pain and not quite pleasure as he felt fangs sink into the delicate flesh of his swollen manhood. 

When he came to he realized simultaneously that it was one of the best orgasms he had ever had and that it had come as part of Armand's endeavors to train him like some kind of animal. He wasn't blind to his association methods. But to be denied the channel through which to focus his work, the only thing that really kept him going nowadays when the hope of Lestat or Justine turned grey and foolish and stale and his memories rebelled against him, oh, that was far worse. He could endure. He knew he could last. He hoped to stand fast against Armand's methods, if he could spot them for what they were. 

But it already felt like Armand was restoring him when he hadn't even known he was lost, and that was before these nightly visits had begun. His entire body was tensed in anticipation for Armand’s presence, and he would be lying if he didn’t admit that he longed for and waited for Armand’s voice, his hand, anything. But this he fought, as he fought the growing pain and pressure behind his eyes, the noise and voices crowding in around him and the music and the sounds and the other sounds. The ones he didn’t want to think about.

"I know you are awake," Armand's voice sounded from the other side of the coffin lid. Damn. The little demon was already here. 

Nicolas huffed, then slid his fingers between the lid and coffin and pushed his way out. He was naked from the waist up and he hugged his elbows from the chill, but at least Armand must have rebuttoned his breeches last night.

Gingerly, he climbed out of the coffin, then sat on the edge of it, staring at the faint scar of the A on his chest. Armand was sitting at Nicki's desk, and when he made a clicking sound without looking up Nicolas flinched, expecting the blow to the legs that would force him kneeling. None came, and he slumped in relief, only to have his world turned upside down when Armand yanked him by the hair and flipped him over, his face smashed against the silk interior of the coffin, and delivered a series of hard wallops on his backside. 

Nicolas could neither contain his surprise not his pain, and he gasped at the sting. 

"You are only making life difficult for yourself," Armand was saying, but Nicolas felt squeezed and suspended and just as it had happened last night, somehow the pain had switched or merged roles with pleasure, for at least they were both some semblance of feeling that Nicolas and Armand both craved. But he did not want it like this! He stopped gasping, biting his lip, shamefully aware of the moan he could not help letting escape as Armand's chilly hand lingered on his inflamed and sore buttocks. 

"It's good we've found something else you like," Armand muttered, and Nicolas shook his head wildly no, no, no! And he squirmed and kicked and tried to push himself upright, but each slap was another chip of his resolve fading. He did not want this! His body was betraying him. He did not want to feel pleasure at this bu- "yes, you naughty boy-" at this, Nicolas gave a terrible shudder, "didn't we just change these breeches?" Nicolas squirmed, but he was unwilling to touch himself before anyone else except for Lestat. 

"This is most unbecoming of a professional," Nicolas gasped, and his breathing stuttered as Armand hauled him up by his hair, spun him around, and forced him to kneel on the floor.

"So you do not want our association? You would have me leave you alone? To toil in peace, as it were? In silence?" Armand demanded, forcing him to expose his neck by yanking his head up by his hair. 

"No, that's not what I meant!" Nicolas said desperately. "I'll listen, I'll learn! Just, just don't leave!"

"How can I believe you when you protest all my lessons? We have only just begun to learn what you are and what you are made for."

"I'll do what you say. I won't, I'll, it's just so hard not to fight it!" Nicolas said, glaring at Armand. "None of it makes any sense to me! What the hell are you trying to do, you sadist? You can't just ask me to beg you to degrade myself."

"We shall see. I have no use for broken things," Armand intoned. He sank his fangs into Nicki's exposed neck, draining him swiftly as he struggled and lashed against him in body and in mind. It did not take long to leave him shivering and weak, thirsting and longing for sustenance. He thinned, cheekbones sharp and eyes enormous before the shadows beneath them, and he fell forward onto his hands, staring at the floor and thinking furiously, blinking through the after effects of the attack. 

"Stay," Armand commanded, and Nicolas heard the dagger being drawn. He tensed, the A in his chest a throbbing reminder. It was still healing, and he lacked precious little blood to remain coherent. What did Armand want?

Some part of him rebelled at this, at the idea of being forced to do this, thought he could make it, just take Eleni and go, find some other way to channel the music and then the noise would go away, that noise, and he rose suddenly and threw Armand backwards against the wall. He barely reached the doorknob before Armand yanked him back by the neck and sank the dagger deep into his back near his kidneys. He pulled him closer like a lover, the dagger sinking deeper until Nicki's back brushed up against Armand's chest. He choked, eyes wide, and his hands grasped for empty air. 

"So that's what your first lesson is to be? I thought you cleverer than that," Armand tutted in his ear, twisting the blade in Nicki's back, and he let out a choking cry of pain. Armand dropped him on the floor and he curled up against the wound, then remembered himself and tried to scramble to his hands and knees, only to be kicked heavily in the gut and thrown against the armoire. 

Nicolas was by no means some willowy fop, as much as some acquaintances might be and as much as he was able to pass should he choose. He was a boy from the provinces, had grown up with a raw talent for horses and craftsmanship. He might have been a carpenter or watchmaker or draper like his father, had he not come to Paris and discovered the violin. He was not a stranger to village tussles, the occasional foray into the wood, and a fistfight or two with a rival or even his father, that final night. 

So he ignored the pain as best he could, taking a few ragged gasps before he lunged at Armand's middle, bringing him down to the floor. His fist heading for that perfect face was stopped by the sheer strength of vampiric age, and Armand, wearing a mask of wrath, shoved him backwards against the armoire. He pushed himself up on his elbows, but was yanked upwards by his neck. The blows came quickly, a blurry whirlwind of strikes on his face and in his gut. He felt dizzy, wretched, and no sound made, no movement with his hands, no counter strike or plea, and he did plea, was acknowledged or made any impact. 

Burning pain exploded across his chest, interrupted and compounded with a shock to his gut, then another break in his arm. He tried to regain his bearings, only to have his face whipped back and forth, backwards and forwards, as if it were only attached to his neck by a string. He felt sick, and his fangs tingled with the force of Armand's blows. An explosion of pain crackled across his jaw, then his nose, and it became difficult to breathe. He put his arms up to try to shield himself, but Armand tripped him, landing him hard on the wood, and suddenly he couldn't hear anything, just a high buzzing of static in his ears and the sound of sickly slow music straining to be known. 

His fingers twitched and he blinked through the blood, trying to breathe through the pain echoing through him, and suddenly his breath hitched and he hiccoughed when Armand's heel came sharply down on his hand. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming as Armand ground his bones against the floor, then jumped onto his chest, stomping his way across Nicki's body like a petulant child. Nicki saw the leather of the shoe coming for his head, and the ringing in his ears was turning into more music, and he felt a hectic frantic sound trying to make itself known in the back of his throat. It seemed so familiar and just out of reach, like hope or safety or salvation. White shocks fled through his vision and Armand yanked him up for yet another round. 

Armand had only been permissive before, pulling back his true strength. Now he delivered the brutal truth of his age so that when he dropped Nicolas to the floor, the will had gone out of him to fight. He curled up in a soft moan, every part of him in pain. Blood dripped from his lips and his right eye was swimming in blood. He felt sick. Everything hurt. 

"If this was what you wanted, all you had to do was ask. Do not waste my time any longer," Armand said over the ringing in Nicki's ears. He kicked aside Nicolas' limp hand lying in his path. The silence was stifling and despite himself Nicolas reached for an ankle, barely grazing it with his fingertips before his hand dropped from pain and exhaustion. The coven master stopped, one hand on the doorknob, about to leave. He looked up at Armand with the one good bleary eye that had not swollen shut. The coven master seemed bathed in red, swimming and swaying back and forth, echoes of him fading in and out of Nicki's vision. 

"What is it?" Armand snapped, making Nicolas flinch. 

"I-" It came out as a parched gasp. It hurt to look up. He coughed more blood, sticky and red and so precious now that he was stabbed and broken inside and out. The ragged remains of his shirt did nothing to hide the bruises and welts that covered every inch of his torso. A boot print was planted on his left hand where it had been ground into the floor, and his right hand was protectively curled like a claw around his gut. Finger marks dotted his neck and arms and his face was a mass of bruises and blood, lips split and nose broken along with his jaw. He could barely see out of one eye. His ribs were crushed and it hurt to breathe, well, it hurt to do anything, and he reached out gingerly, only able to deal with the pain one second at a time. A month's worth of beatings compressed in an hour, if it had even been that long. As a mortal he would have died halfway through. It had felt like forever. Compared to this pain, that promise of static night after night terrified him, how could it not? 

And now he realized he had not known how much he valued the music until now. How much the antiseptic grey and the formless noise and the silence loomed and threatened. How it felt when he was ready to pay for an escape from it, only to find he had exhausted his last chance. It was about to walk out the door. It had given up on him. It was all his fault, per usual. It felt like a monumental achievement just to have gotten Armand's attention, and he needed to keep it, desperately. 

Armand crouched down and sneered at Nicolas' bruised and bloody face. When he realized the violinist had not the strength to move it, though he was nearly certain he hadn't broken his neck, he grabbed Nicki's broken jaw and squeezed his cheeks together, yanking his face towards him to talk. The hoarse cries in the back of his throat sounded delicious, and Armand knew they were meant only for him. 

"Shall I call the others in? Would you like to accuse me of abuse before them? It is rather your style to play the martyr, isn't it? To play the victim? Behold their playwright, their idiot sauvant of a violinist. Denied the inspiration of his musical composition by the evil coven master," Armand seethed. "Is it not enough that I abandon you to the noise and the silence? Shall I strip you down and bring them in to see you brought low?" 

Nicki's eyes widened. "No!" he rasped, choking in pain as Armand squeezed and ground his broken cheekbones together. "N-Please." Armand went very still, and the intent of his eyes bore deep into Nicki, as if his soul were flayed instead of his body, and he suddenly understood what he had to do, and what he had to give up. "Please. Please, Master." His face felt flushed with humiliation but he dared not look away now, not when this might be his only chance. Armand never changed his mind. 

Armand gazed at him for a few moments, expression unreadable, and then nodded, dropping his head roughly to the wooden floor with an explosion of pain. 

He felt a warmness on his face, and smelled the rich scent of blood, old powerful vampire blood, and he thirsted so much he thought he would weep like a child. It dripped down on his face, healing his eyes first, the cut on his forehead, and he reached out with his tongue to taste it, only to have Armand seal his mouth with his hand. He looked up and saw red droplets, precious rain dripping down from Armand's wrist onto his face. Armand was healing him, perhaps not within but at least on the surface. But he would not let Nicki taste his blood!

Nicolas barely dared to whine as he felt his jaw knitting together, and he cringed and whimpered as the coven master's powerful blood dotted his broken fingers, making them whole as if Armand had not crushed them beneath his shoes and ground them against the floor. And then it was over. Enough for now. Enough for Nicolas to sit up. Enough for his breathing to return without pain. 

Armand did not release him until the last jewel-like drop of crimson sank into Nicki's skin and disappeared, causing a brief bloom of color as it healed the space around it. The rest of him was still shattered, but his face and his hands were restored. Perhaps that was all Armand wanted from him. He could hope. For now it was relief enough that some part of him did not hurt and slice through him with pain, and he gingerly closed and opened his fingers, grateful for this kindness. What would he be without his hands?

Armand replaced his own hand with his lips, drawing the gentlest of kisses from Nicolas and making his head spin. He ached. He ached for meaning and ached for the music and he ached to be out of this. He ached for Lestat and for Justine and for sanity and normality and he ached for death. When had he last been truly happy, with no reservations? No fears? No nagging sensible thoughts about what to guard against? It had been Justine, hadn't it? He hadn't planned for any future since Lestat until he met Justine. Even with Lestat it had been like delaying their inevitable demise. 

And now he let the relief wash over him as Armand mercifully granted him this moment of gentleness, this peace in three days of physical abuse and mental games. He didn't want to feel thankful, but he was simply so anxious it was not another beating that he could not help the gratitude that rose in his heart. Armand would balance things surely, the way he was now?

The kiss left him shuddering, and he realized the stabbing sensation was not his emotions but the feel of Armand sinking his finger into the dagger wound in his back. He could feel Armand's blood, from his cut finger no doubt, knitting him up from the inside, but he was taking his time, feeling Nicki's flesh, caressing him from the inside and watching the agony flutter across his face as he widened the wound and tugged at the skin around it.

Suddenly the tread of a military boot sounded in his head and he blinked, seeing a diplomat's sash and a general's medals, outdated feather hats and cuffs of ermine. It dizzied him, and Armand left him slumped against the armoire as someone knocked on the door and he rose to answer. 

"Herr Krulper. Thank you. It is suitably warm. That will be all," Armand said quietly, then shut the door. He returned with a steaming warm chalice of blood, human blood, and Nicolas gulped it down, holding it in both hands in his eagerness and thirst. It flowed through him and he felt less stretched, less desperate and bewildered. 

His vision cleared and he looked up at the perfect being standing before him. 

"Thank you," he whispered, holding the cup up with perfect fingers and broken arms that mended even as he lifted them. Again he felt like a child as Armand retrieved the cup from his hands and held it to Nicki’s lips, pouring the warmed blood into his mouth, feeding him like a newborn fledgling. He stared up at Armand’s eyes, so attentive, the only thing he could beseech in his isolation for succor, and closed his eyes to the faint susurration of whispers that accompanied the blood as it nourished him and slowly overwhelmed him in its embrace.

Armand's angelic curls tumbled as he tilted his head to one side, and he took the cup, setting it outside the door before closing and locking it once more. Nicolas' eyes followed the key going into Armand's pocket hungrily, and too late did he look away. 

"I see," Armand said testily, and glanced at his pocketwatch. "We will have to finish tomorrow." It was nearing dawn. Nicolas could feel the pull on his limbs, which was why he did not dodge the blow to his gut. He doubled over with a choking sound, feeling something inside him rupture and break, and gasped shallowly as Armand lifted him by one dislocated shoulder and struck him again, slamming him down to the floor and flat onto his back. He tore out a piece of Nicki's shirt and stuffed it into his mouth, so that his scream was muffled when Armand's boot trod mercilessly over the fingers of his right hand, grinding them and stomping on them until they were broken. 

"You have much more to learn," Armand decided, gazing down at Nicki's curled form as he sobbed, clutching his broken hand to himself. "But we have all of eternity. I only hope for your sake that you are as quick a learner as you are supposedly willing."

Nicolas looked up with eyes of hate, and Armand shook his head in disapproval. Those dark brown eyes widened and clenched shut as Armand delivered the second beating for the night until Nicolas went limp from the sun. His hair was damp with blood, and barely an inch of his skin was not black or bruised, bones sticking at odd angles. He dumped the bleeding broken fledgling unceremoniously into his coffin and closed the lid, then locked the study door behind him before leaving for his manor house. 

Nicolas woke up with terrified gasps in the darkness. Where was he? It had been an endless night of pain upon pain. He had tried to fight back. He had been overpowered. He had tried to submit. It did not suit him. He had tried to deceive. He had been punished. Oh how he had been punished. 

He tried moving his hand and was dismayed to find it still broken. So it hadn't been some nightmare. If he didn't get out tonight he would simply be Armand's whipping boy for all eternity, theatre be damned. How could something so beautiful and alluring be so evil and brutal? It was all of Nicki's nightmarish temptations wrapped up in one. 

If he woke early enough, if he could get a message to Eleni...they could leave this place! He listened for any sounds from outside, but only heard cold echoes in the hallway, unfamiliar to him and unlike the wooden creaks of the theatre. Where was he?

Suddenly the lid to his coffin was removed. He was lifted into dim candlelight and thrown roughly against the wall, crushing the breath out of him before he fell to the floor. He blinked and shook his head to clear his vision. Of course. Armand rose earlier than anyone else. He must have moved Nicki's coffin to one of the new catacombs beneath the theatre. It looked much like a monk's cell, and Nicolas suppressed a laugh, though it escaped him anyway when Armand dealt him a kick to the gut. 

So the beating was to resume, without end. Nicolas snarled, trying to twist and push back, but Armand was no longer playing. He crushed the bones of his broken hand, and flung Nicki's head back and forth with punches on one side of his face, then another. He could barely see past the dizziness, and it left him no time to recover from the pain, beyond holding on to his shoulders and trying to walk him into walls. 

He wasn't sure how long it was before his grip on Armand slipped, and his knees finally gave out and he collapsed to the cold hard stone floor. He pushed himself onto his elbows and tried to crawl away, but Armand only flipped him onto his back again. He closed his eyes against the fist that came again at his head, and the heel that stamped on his stomach and the elbow that paralyzed his arm at the shoulder. Cold dead fingers clamped around his neck and he couldn’t breathe, he clawed at those fingers and he still couldn’t breathe and suddenly he felt a crack and he felt squeezed and he couldn’t move, but he could feel and Armand made sure he could feel every blow ringing through his head and his brow and his hip and his back and his stomach and his legs and he couldn’t move and he couldn’t scream and all he could do was hurt and suffer.

By the time he lost consciousness he had already prayed to God and all the saints, had asked for death from Armand, from Lestat, from Eleni, from anyone. He had promised his violin and his soul, anything, to stop the ceaseless pain. Surely there was something Armand wanted, besides what Nicolas was unwilling to give. Surely there would be a chance to bargain. Surely this was not the end and the only reason.

The next night was the same, and a dullness entered Nicki's eyes when he realized nothing he did would change. There were no negotiations to be had here. Just the iron will of Armand's fist, heading for a sore and broken part of his body. His eyes drifted in and out of focus, soft grunts escaping him with every escalation of air. Every inch of him felt splintered, run over twice and beaten. He knew what Armand was trying to do. But he could not bring himself to say it again. 

It was perhaps the fourth night, though it was hard to tell with time when he fell in and out of consciousness, always in pain, not knowing if it was from the beatings or the sun. He couldn't do it anymore. This was for an eternity. And neither Armand’s interest nor his energy were slackening. 

Some part of him chipped and broke and fell away from him, and when he thought to save it Armand held him up by the hair and struck him with an uppercut that interrupted that thought, left the piece falling and falling and lost, just as he did before landing on the stones. His back was broken, surely. All his soft fleshy parts were tenderized. He coughed blood, and swallowed. The brief pause in the contact of Armand to Nicki was such a relief he nearly sobbed in gratitude. Armand angered was a terrible sight to behold and to receive.

"Please, Master!" He tried to scream, but the words came out garbled. He tasted blood in his mouth. Armand stopped, and looked down at him patiently. Nicolas panicked under his inspection, casting around for something that Armand would want to hear. "I...I obey!" He raised trembling hands in supplication and thought it was strange to have nails outlined in dried blood.

Armand rose while Nicolas trembled on the floor, grateful for a cessation in the beatings and taking shuddering breaths caught short by the shooting pain that had him in a vise, then placed a dagger in Nicki's mangled hands, and sat him up against the wall. 

"Show me," Armand said encouragingly, kissing him softly on the cheek, and Nicolas was overjoyed by this affection. Such merciful pause in six nights of endless pain. Such affection he had fought against for so long, since the beginning, since Justine and since Lestat and since those dark damp tombs where he had lost his way. It was more than a relief, but a comfort now, such as could be had in the farce that was his existence now. It was something. He searched Armand's soulless black eyes for some clue, some command for what was expected next. Anything but for the beatings to resume.

"F-for you," he whispered haltingly, looking earnestly at Armand with wide eyes, never breaking eye contact as he shoved the dagger straight into his own heart. His mouth gave a shuddering gasp and stayed open, his entire being pinned in space by the knife, and Armand smiled that angel's smile and kissed the blood from Nicki's open mouth. He kissed his quivering lips, wet with blood, and the blood tears from his eyes, and he sucked the blood from his tongue, and he kissed his neck and his chest and the hilt of the dagger and Nicki's fingertips, and Nicolas rested his head against the cold rough stone and watched with half-lidded eyes as Armand peppered him with approval instead of punishment. He gave a grunt, feeling something else very deep inside his head splinter and shatter as he twisted the blade inside him, making Armand smile even wider, and kiss him thoroughly and breathlessly as he yanked the blade out of Nicki's chest, swallowing the violinist's pained choking gasp. 

"There there," Armand whispered in his ear, a soft caress against his bruised and sensitive skin. Nicki drew in a shallow breath as Armand explored the depth of the wound with his long fingers, poking haphazardly at the chambers of his heart and making him groan, brows knitting together in exquisite agony and helplessness. "You're at my mercy now, my will. It's been so hard for you to understand that, I know, but I have you now. Your fire is mine to temper and command."

Nicolas wanted to weep, but it was hard enough to draw breath with Armand sticking holes in him. But he was being so gentle, and Nicolas had to keep his attention if he did not want the beatings to resume or for him to disappear. Then maybe when everything settled down he could return to the music. 

Armand bent and tongued the open wound, tasting Nicolas' heart and drawing a moan from the violinist who was no longer certain what it was he felt. He was floating in a haze of pain and surrender. It was hard to stop himself from fighting, and he felt himself slipping with each second of Armand's tenderness. If he could just rest, if he could just have a moment, he could fight against it. He could. He could escape and get better and flee forever or tell Eleni who would put up her hands in horror and tell F√©lix who would do nothing and who would bring a whip because because no, they would not betray him like that. They were his friends, his compatriots. They had founded the theatre and they had feared Armand just as he did, and Eleni knew Armand had an unhealthy fixation too, and he would just go to them, as soon as-

"Come back to me," Armand snapped, and slapped him across the face before boxing his ears. He whimpered, trying to draw himself into a tighter ball, but Armand snatched his wrists and he had not the strength to fight while his hands were tied together with a length of silk. Distantly he recognized it was the same color as the sash on one of the old angel costumes and he gave a wheezing laugh of disbelief. His eyes swiveled in their sockets as Armand picked him up and deposited him on a stone bed that scraped at his breeches. He felt the rough slab beneath his cheek--he had not the strength to lift his head or himself, and his hands were tied behind his back in any case. 

"Shh," Armand murmured, and Nicolas realized he had been making small whimpering noises. Armand showed him a tiny key that shone in the candlelight, cast in silver and gleaming. He blinked at it, captivated by the light reflecting off of it, and watched as Armand brought it down towards his chest. In a sudden moment of horror he realized what was about to happen, and he tried to scoot away, to fall off the bed and run or crawl or slide or anything, anything to stop the horror of Armand sliding the key into his heart and sealing the wound with a cut finger. It was inside him! It was inside him! He couldn't get it out and Armand was sealing in his wound as he went out, sealing this foreign key inside him and he couldn't stop-

"Shh," Armand murmured again, and Nicolas quieted, suddenly realizing that he was making tiny whimpering noises again. He closed his mouth and breathed hard through his nose. Even the tiny drops of Armand's blood working within him were healing him quickly from the inside out, and he felt he could breathe a little easier, perhaps endure another night. 

But then Armand coaxed him on his knees, raising his rear into the air, and those long fingers reached around his waist and slid off his belt. He could hear the clink of the metal, and in disbelief he felt those fingers begin to undo the laces of his breeches. 

"Wh-what are you doing?" he murmured, trying to muster up some scorn, but he was so tired, so pained, that so long as it wasn't another beating or whipping he thought he might be able to suffer it with dignity. His voice was hoarse with disuse for anything but the groans and grunts of something beaten to a shadow of a man. He pushed backwards and up against Armand, half-hoping to distract him, half-welcoming of any gentleness, but those cold hands were relentless.

"Inspiring you," Armand said, stripping Nicolas of his breeches, tugging down one of his stockings as he did so. The cold air hit his nakedness, and he tried to clamp his knees and legs together, but he knew it was useless. Armand could see everything, the little bastard. 

"No one explained what it would all look like when you grew up?" Nicolas said bitterly, and was rewarded with a dizzying blow to the back of his head that made him see stars. He didn't think vampires produced bile, but he retched from the nausea it caused, wavering where he knelt. A wave of despair tore through him, threatening him with another night of nothing but tortured pain.

"You do yourself no favors," Armand pronounced. "But I have faith in you yet. You promised to obey. If I am your Master, you need please only me. Do with your time what you will but my word is law and when I call you shall come. Your pleasure is at my disposal and my command, as is your pain. Your lesson begins here."

"What were the last four nights? Does the sound of your own voice please you so, or-" Nicolas began to say with effort, only to be choked off by the feeling of a long finger grazing a hole he had not used since he was made a vampire. He flinched, paled, and tried to scoot away, but Armand held him fast by his left shin and his grip was hard enough to threaten more pain. 

"Shh," Armand said softly, and bent to kiss one cheek, then the other. Nicolas shuddered and turned his face, trying to hide it from the world. This couldn't be happening. This wasn't happening to him. Armand grazed his skin with his fangs, leaving droplets of blood he licked up, then laved the tender supple flesh where his rear curved the most. This couldn't be happening. He couldn't believe this. Last year, last year he'd been with Lestat in Paris, above ground, and he had been content if not happy, and he had-he choked out a sob as Armand licked him ever so tenderly, circling and circling the entrance to his rear passage as if Nicolas were circling down a drain himself, losing more and more pieces of his mind along the way. 

"Stop, stop, I don't want this, I don't," Nicolas whispered, squeezing his eyes shut, and Armand slapped him where he had been spanked the other night, making him choke back a yelp. A fury rose in him at being treated like a child, at being violated this way, and he twisted, viciously kicking Armand in the face and catching him by surprise. The creature was so very vain, he knew. It bought him a brief freedom and he flung himself off the stone bed, landing hard and naked on the floor. It knocked the breath out of him, weakened and blood-starved as he was with barely a bone in his body that was not splintered in pain. He shoved himself along the floor when he realized his knees would not obey him or allow him to rise, and frantically pulled at the ring in the door. 

"Help! Help anyone! Eleni! Laurent! Félix! Anyone please!" He screamed, banging on the locked door. He looked down at his chest, but the keyhole was not tiny and silver, but iron and massive instead, and try as he might, even when he bore his full weight on it he could not tug the door open. "Help! Do not let Armand do this to me!" His forehead suddenly met the rough wood of the door, exploding into a galaxy of starry pain, and he tasted blood in his mouth. When he opened his eyes he was lying on the floor on his back, cold stones beneath his shoulder blades and his head, his arms painfully twisted beneath him. Armand loomed over him, and the look of interest on his face made him panic, and made something inside him break and forget to think. It was the look of a boy who pulled the wings off insects. 

"And do you think you'll still fly afterwards?" Armand asked softly, and Nicolas realized too late that he had said that aloud. 

"You don't have to do this," he said, trying to make his voice steady. Couldn't they hear his screaming?:

"Your attraction to me is undeniable but it is your complete and utter submission to my will that I require, Nicolas," Armand explained patiently as he scraped Nicki's back along the stones and pulled him closer. He was kneeling and straddling Nicki's legs, keeping them apart even as the violinist tried to close them. "Nothing more and nothing less. Everything else is. . ." He made a vague gesture. "Your own frivolousness. I can be benevolent."

"I'll tell everyone afterwards," Nicolas whispered, by now realizing there was nothing more he could do to stop this. He clenched himself tightly as Armand traced his entrance with one long dry finger. Nicolas told himself he could go inside, let a different part of himself hurt. He could be elsewhere. It was just a matter of divisions, just another Nicolas terrified and hurting and slowly slowly giving up the will to fight and resist and defy Armand's nightly visits that overwhelmed him body and soul. And a different Nicolas spoke now, controlled, sober, alert and looking for weaknesses and opportunities of escape. The other Nicolas, well, he could be dealt with later, soothed, but for now, sensible Nicolas was needed. 

But because he was sensible, sensible Nicolas was terrified. "You can't threaten me with shame or disgrace. I'm not a stranger to that. I will tell everyone and we shall drive you out of this city," he promised, but his eyes were shut tightly and he was consumed with fear as he trembled. Please not another beating. Or something worse. And it was only going to get worse, he knew. This wasn't like their fights any longer. Armand had only been toying with him, small petty arguments about liberties and supplies and what to print on flyers. 

"No you won't," Armand said, and thrust one finger in, making Nicolas cry out. His eyes were wide and he was rigid, his mind blanking for one moment, unwilling and unable to understand how it had come to this, unable to believe this was happening. "Who would believe poor mad Nicolas?" He withdrew it and thrust in again, relishing in the repeated cries as he continued. "Poor mad violinist," he mocked, his finger scraping the walls of Nicolas' passage with no preparation, tearing at the delicate lining with his nails as Nicolas screamed in agony, trying to kick him away out of pure instinct. He held one of his legs in place. "Still clinging to his mortal past, haunting his mortal life, who knows where his mind goes? Poor mad violinist." Nicolas felt a warmth below, but it was not the burning friction, rather it was his own blood dripping down his thighs and coating Armand's finger. He gave a sobbing groan as Armand added a second, expanding his passage now that it was slick with his own blood. 

"No, no, stop this, stop stop stop stop stop anything," he babbled, choking on his cries as Armand thrust three fingers in now, pushing the walls of his anal passage wider and with no gentleness. He bucked up, trying to escape, his hands pressing beneath his back against the floor, but there wasn't enough leverage. He just felt that terrible burning and the clawing of Armand's nails as if they reached into his soul instead of merely inside him. He tried to rise again, holding his breath with effort, but every push of Armand's fingers was mind-clearing agony, white hot to the tips of his nails and he clenched his hands and gritted his teeth, caught even as Armand shoved him back down. He couldn't get away. There was no way for him to argue out of this, or die, or fight, or talk, or shout, or or or-there was nothing he could do. So he screamed and screamed until Armand struck him across the face. This was his final punishment, wasn't it? Papa had said he would be damned for the work of his hands and so he was. There was no way out at last, no side gallery to laugh and toss self-indulgent cynicism from. No upper balcony to throw paper notes from. 

"Can't be trusted, our mad Nicolas. Gets up to all sorts of nonsense and mischief. All he's good for is writing and raving," Armand said, watching Nicolas' agony greedily. His brown curls were wilted and stuck to his cheek where he tossed his head against the stone floor, and though his face had been healed, the rest of his bruised body was a palette of blues and browns, finger marks and explosions of force. It had been good to let go, for once. And Nicki came from good pedigree. Fledgling as he was, he could endure the strength of Armand’s violence, even if he wished otherwise. 

"Shall we go for four?" Armand asked, and a questioning whimper escaped Nicolas, his brows knitted in pain, his mouth open and slack as his mind was tried to escape what his body could not, only to be brought back with every shocking sensation. His naked chest was thrust upwards uncomfortably from the way his hands were bound beneath him, and he had tried to at least gain some leverage and relief by supporting himself with one stockinged foot on the floor, only to lose his footing every thrust. 

"Voilá," Armand said as if demonstrating a trick, and Nicolas knew he was going to die, he wasn't going to survive this and suddenly Armand's fingers twisted and struck some deep spot within him and he keened out in confusion and pleasure and overwhelming sensation. "Aha," Armand said, and palpated his fingers against the spot, making Nicki's breaths come in short gasps, then in moans, the electricity shooting up from that key tender nub overwhelming every other track in his brain. He flushed in shame, unable to believe he was enjoying this. What was wrong with him? Poor mad Nicolas. They would ask him and they would know, if he told them what Armand had done, they would know the pleasure it gave and pronounce him for what he was. Didn't he want this from Armand? Hadn't they an arrangement? But not this, never, he had never thought--

"No one will believe you if you tell them," Armand promised him, thrusting his fingers in and out again and watching Nicolas pant and writhe in pleasure and pain even as the blood poured out of him. The violinist's cock was at attention and he grasped it hard, squeezing it below the head and drawing the foreskin back roughly and drawing a yelp from the fledgling. "By the time I'm done, you won't be able to." Nicolas eyes flashed open in fear. "Did you think I cared for your sanity? I only need your work and your fire, Nicolas. Everything else is as I said. Frivolousness." Nicolas closed his eyes in despair. "Oh, did you really think I needed you to learn how to survive this age? You?" The scorn in his words somehow hurt more than anything else that night, and Nicolas let the pleasure wash over him unwillingly, surrendering himself to Armand's ministrations on his prostate. Armand had been right. Poor mad Nicolas. Only the mad could have taken any joy in such depraved treatment. He didn’t want to enjoy it, but he could feel himself slipping, aching for any kind of pleasure or relief from the never-ending pain of Armand’s attentions, even if it meant his body betrayed him and he did precisely what his captor wanted.

Dimly he knew his anal passage was healing itself with the very blood Armand's fingers scraped out of him, making sure every thrust felt like a new rape, but with the coven master playing with his prostate gland, that secret spot within that he and Lestat had discovered one crisp autumn morning in Jean Lefaneuil's barn with some tallow, oh God, he could barely understand how anything could feel like this. He didn't want this to feel good! He wasn't enjoying this. He wanted to be anywhere but here beneath Armand. But his own body was telling him what a fool he was to reject this attention. Who else wanted Nicolas? Not Lestat, and now that Nicolas was ruined Lestat would never even look upon him again. No one but Armand would deign to treat with Nicolas. Poor mad Nicolas. He felt a choking sob escape him, and he gasped for breath, every inch of him burning with sensitivity as he longed for an end to this, even if it meant release, or Armand’s completion, or anything, anything really. He bit his lip and tasted blood and felt his thoughts and intentions drain away before more pain brought him back. He shook his head.

"But you love this, Nicolas. Look how you moan and writhe for me," Armand said, and he paused his hand on Nicki's cock, making him reflexively pump upwards, to his shame. He felt like he was flushing, and he closed his eyes and turned his face away. "No shame. I am here to teach you all manner of pleasure, and how pain is just another dimension of that sensation."

"You're mad," Nicolas gasped, closing his eyes as if he could will his cock to soften, but the stabs against his prostate were drawing unwilling whimpers from the back of his throat, slowly breaking down his will and his defiance with every burst of pleasure. It was so different from what had come before and yet there was so much pain still. 

"If you will," Armand conceded, making Nicki's eyes flash open in alarm. It was the first time he had heard the coven master speak this way. "You might as well make the best of it." He looked down, speeding up his hand and making Nicolas moan helplessly. "And how you love it. Did you do this with Lestat? Two young men, two provincial boys, fumbling with each other in a hayloft somewhere with a tub of grease or tallow? Or was it just spit? Don't tell me it was love? Did he twist his fingers like this? Did he know you like being taken like a whore? Do you think we should tell him?"

"No no no no pl-please no," Nicolas outright begged, voice breaking, sobbing helplessly as Armand bent forward to lick the fresh tears off his face, never slowing the pace of his fingers inside Nicolas, making him twitch and shudder. Not Lestat. Anything but that. He hated the thought of Lestat when he was with Armand like this, but it was even harder to avoid with Armand threatening to expose and humiliate Nicolas in front of everyone. 

"Yes, look, you love hearing that. You are a whore aren't you? Not even fit to be a courtesan," Armand murmured as Nicolas bucked up helplessly into his hand and came in a spurt of blood over himself, shouting incoherently before he collapsed, shuddering and twitching. But Armand continued and Nicolas moaned in pain, opening his eyes and seeing the immaculate coven master still kneeling between his exhausted legs, fingers still within him and making him see stars. His cock twitched in its pool of blood without Armand touching it, but it was sensitive and sore and when Armand took hold of it, Nicolas groaned in pain, high pitched and keening. 

"Enough, enough, stop, stop, I finished," he babbled as if his lover were an actual partner. "It hurts, it hurts." He shook his head wildly and breathlessly as Armand drew painful strokes from his oversensitive cock and continued fingering his prostate, now swollen and sensitive as well. It was like dragging claws across his back, making him twitch and yelp and scream, the pleasure so intense it scrambled his mind into pain and sensation and overwhelmed every other thought in his head so that all he could do was moan and sob in reaction, tossing his head and writhing beneath his abuser. 

"You shouldn't tell lies," Armand admonished, twisting his fingers and making Nicolas erupt in a dry scream, cock pumping and twitching a small amount of blood this time before Nicolas dropped down, exhausted. "Look how well you're doing. You're made for this. To be my slut. To be my private whore. I must thank Lestat for training you so well. He did say I would have to break you in a little, but that it was worth it. That you'd be eating cum from anyone I sent you to, and be the perfect little depository for all my little fantasies of desire."

"He. He didn't," Nicolas denied fervently. "He wouldn't have said that." But he was panting and why did he still keep coming if he didn't want to? He and Lestat were inseparable, but aside from a few fumbles back home, their attentions had been more around each other's cocks rather than their bums, eager young men that they were and always ready and in a hurry. Grease or tallow was expensive and only a few times for a special occasion did he or Lestat take turns with one another, whispering words of adoration and love, ever so slowly, ever so carefully. They had been devoted to each other. And passionate too. There were little play nights with the girls, but he and Lestat had their private world. No more. He had thrown that all away, stripped it from himself and exiled himself from that devotion forever. He could have had it and he hated himself for his stupidity. 

"So sure of that as you are of your body?" Armand asked, taking hold of Nicki's limp cock again. He had never stopped tapping and thrusting on his prostate, and when he touched Nicki's exhausted cock the violinist broke off into a moan that turned frantic in pain and panic before it became sobbing as Armand wrapped his fingers around the oversensitive flesh and began rubbing and teasing it again, drawing deep shocks of pain that were still somehow very much like the most intimate pleasure. "Did you think Lestat wouldn't have told me how to tame you? He told me you were easy, but I didn't imagine how easy, how natural you are at being anyone's whore. And now that you are mine and we are immortal, you are mine forever. No matter what happens." Armand squeezed Nicki's cock hard and the violinist came dry, body convulsing as his eyes rolled up in his head sightlessly. Armand slapped him until he came around, and he gave a desperate frantic sort of cry when he realized Armand's fingers were still in him.

"Pl-please," he tried to gasp, barely coherent, now drooling blood as Armand's fingers took his mind and shut it away. He tossed his head uselessly and begged, “Please please please please please pl-stop!"

Armand slapped him, and Nicolas whimpered, stopping his begging, and closed his eyes as if resigned. He was trying to close up, to withdraw, but every time Armand pressed against his abused flesh he took a gasping breath, brought back into pain. Armand leaned in, his face blocking out everything else in Nicolas' blood sweat-drenched blurry vision, and claimed his mouth, plundering it as it quivered and opened beneath his lips and his teeth and his tongue. He bit deeply, not with his fangs, savoring the taste of Nicolas before leaving the violinist with a debauched and bleeding mouth. Nicki had not the energy to govern it any longer, and it lay slack and open, blood drool dripping slowly out of it as he tried to breathe normally and recover from each little painful ecstasy. Armand thought it a beautiful sight, and he frowned when Nicolas shut his eyes and pressed his lips together and still thought he could resist, could stop his overwrought and trembling body from bowing to Armand. 

"No. You are nothing when you are with me. All you do is feel and obey, and everything you have and are is at my command. Obey and you shall be rewarded, but defy me and know my wrath," Armand said, pushing with his fingers with every word, twisting painfully on the last word and making Nicolas scream, even with his eyes closed, then break into sobs of silent mouthing of the word "no". 

This would not do, but he was close. The barrage of abuse, of physical beating and annihilation, of assault upon his memories and his trust of Lestat, of recasting his body's involuntary helpless reactions as his own desires, and of the promise of deliverance through Armand, would soon crystallize. Nicolas could not withstand the onslaught forever, and he already had lasted more than Armand had seen. He needed one final overwhelming push of sensation. 

He yanked on Nicki's hair and forced him to watch as he sucked hard on Nicki's spent cock, enjoying the confused and desperate expressions crawl across Nicolas' face ("No, no more, no more please, no more!") before it went blank when Armand sank his fangs into the limp flesh and he moaned, the first genuine moan of abandon Armand had heard. There was no more resistance here, now, several forced orgasms in with his thoughts overwhelmed by sensation. His mind had gone. Sometime between the third and the fourth in Armand's mouth, perhaps, but Nicolas and his fight was no longer there. He tried to close his eyes again, drained and exhausted, finally unable to hold on to coherence any longer, but Armand yanked at his hair again and he obeyed without question this time. Good. He was a creature of blind sensation now.

Armand withdrew and untied Nicki's hands, knowing he would stay and not fight now, and Nicki lay on the floor, hands sprawled at his sides, one still partially broken. Armand unlaced his breeches and pulled Nicki across the rough stone, the pain making the fledgling moan, but he leaned into Armand’s touch, seeking any kind of anchor as his mind reeled.

It made Armand pause, and then smile at Nicki's blank and wanting expression. He no longer understood the difference between pain and pleasure anymore. Good. All he did was wait for the next sensation to be visited upon him. 

With that he thrust into Nicolas hard and deep, choking off his breath with the force of his thrust and watching as his fingers scrabbled at the stone floor for purchase. 

"Look at you," Armand murmured, thrusting again. "Even with four you recover so quickly. Lestat was right. You are a tight little whore. You need my proper attention, and if you're good, you shall receive it." He resumed raping Nicolas roughly, drawing moans and half-formed shrieks and screams, but no more resistance. The violinist had none left after all those nights and the words Armand filled his mind with helped with the deterioration as they replaced what thoughts had flown, driven out by the beating and the sexual abuse. He had been Lestat's and now he was Armand's and he would have to get away with what little of himself they allowed him, whatever that was. And if he obeyed he would at least get some respite. 

"That's it," he said approvingly, watching as he stuck a finger in Nicki's mouth and the violinist lathed his tongue around it mindlessly as if it were the last thing he would ever get to taste. One by one he licked his own blood off Armand's fingers and then moaned again, Armand's cock having struck his prostate. "Good," Armand said, angling his hips and thrusting again, drawing another frantic, high-pitched moan from Nicolas. He could feel the fledgling's heartbeat quicken, and he realized it was excitement from the praise. "Look at me."

Eyes filled with fear and panic opened and stared wide-eyed at him. Was something bad going to happen? He had been good. He obeyed and he even made the sounds and motions Master liked though he would have made them anyway. It seemed like all of Nicolas was writhing and convulsing beneath him, and his mouth was a perfect O that widened into a cry with every thrust. What more could Armand want?

"Say that you are mine," Armand said, speeding up. 

"I-ah," Nicolas slurred brokenly, not quite there. "I'm I ah am nngh mmnha-yrrh. I'm yours."

"Say it again," Armand said, grasping Nicki's cock and making him tighten around Armand's. 

“I! Am! Yours!" Nicolas cried, his entire mind focused on this task and on trying to keep his eyes open. It emptied out, and Armand thrust one final time, deep and hard, pumping his hips every so often until he was done. Nicolas sobbed the entire time, only to come dry a final time in Armand's hands. His eyes were half-lidded and unseeing as he lay on his back, covered and surrounded in blood, a ruined thing. 

"Oh I shall take you to such heights, my Nicolas," Armand murmured, gathering the limp figure in his arms. Small sounds escaped the back of Nicki's throat, but it seemed he took comfort in this gesture of affection. Nicolas did not look at him. "My frenetic fabulist. My corybantic composer. My crazy catamite." He giggled, but if Nicolas heard him, he was far away. "My vicious violent violinist." He sighed. "My Nicolas." He kissed the fledgling in his arms. "If you're not truly mad yet, I might have to drive you mad before long. So long as you are Mine. My love." Nicolas closed his eyes and sighed, only dimly understanding what his captor said. 

The following night Nicolas awoke in his coffin, clothed and sore but in his office, his papers and quills on his desk in tidy piles and rows. 

He sat in his coffin without rising, and inspected his chest. Nothing. No scar. Had it all been a terrible twisted nightmare? 

He shuddered, drawing his knees to his chest and hugging himself tightly. A soreness in his breeches told him it had not been his imagination, and he bit back an anguished sob. He had not thought of this. He had not wanted this. He had not ever imagined this.

Would Armand return? What had he done to deserve this? Was it the way he behaved like a polished Parisian gentleman, flaunting and strutting for Armand to see and seethe? What had he done to entice Armand to make him the focus of all his depraved attentions? Was it the way the noise and the music took him and fashioned him into their instrument so that he shoved his way through the maelstrom of sound and came out the other end gasping, barely aware of what he had wrought in the meantime? He could only be himself!

A knock sounded on the door, and he realized he hadn't locked it. Or had he? He scrambled to his feet and half-tripped over the edge of his coffin, crawling to get to the door. It didn't feel like he'd been starved, and yet that ever-present soreness, and that strange- he flung the door open as Eleni raised her hand another time.

"Bonsoir, Nicki," Eleni said, leaning up for the customary greeting kiss. But Nicolas shied away with an urgent, frightened sound. Her brow furrowed as she watched him back away from her, hand over his forehead and the other bracing himself against his desk. He looked feverish, but it was not like any fit she had seen before. She looked left and right down the hall and finally shut the door behind her, drawing a look of alarm and guilt from her charge. 

"Nicki, what is troubling you?" she asked softly. 

He spared her a brittle smile that turned into a frown, and when he turned she saw the tension in his shoulders and his back, and-"You're bleeding!" she gasped before she could stop himself, her nostrils flaring. It was vampire blood, and it was Nicki's, and it seeped into the linen of the back of his shirt and the silk at the seat of his breeches. 

"What?" Nicolas asked in alarm, and when she darted forward to spin him around he backed hurriedly away from her, his breathing quickening, and he snapped, "I'm fine!" He looked away at the work. "I'm fine."

"Nicki, let me look. What's happened?" She asked. "Is it Armand? Did you two fight again? What did you say this time?"

"Did I-" Nicolas gave a start, then something that sounded like a half sob as his knees seemed to weaken and he shoved her away by her shoulders. "Get out." 

She stumbled backwards, bewildered. "I didn't mean it was your fault, Nicki cher, you just, the two of you are like oil and water, you-"

"Get. Out." Nicolas said, baring his fangs for the first time she'd seen him, but blood tears were rolling down his cheeks and he was leaning against the wall and suddenly his knees gave out and he left a streak of red as he slid to the floor. 

"Nicki!" She made a motion towards him. 

"GET OUT!" He roared at her. He pulled at his clothes and his hair and kicked the chair at her, forcing her to leap over it gracefully. He was making himself as small as possible and he was crying, and all her heart told her to go to him. 

"Please, Nicki, let me help! You don't have to go through this alone!" Eleni pleaded, finally kneeling and grabbing the arm he had flung over his head to hide and shelter his face, hidden against the knees drawn up tightly to his chest. She could see the blood on his pants and she wondered where it was coming from. 

"Get the fuck out!" He screamed in her face, shoving her backwards with such force and violence she smacked her head against the door across the room. He looked shocked and surprised to have done it. "Eleni-I'm sorry, I-" and then his lips pressed into a thin line, and he narrowed his eyes and suddenly disappeared from her vision. 

"Nicolas!" Where was he? She stood up easily-he hadn't hurt her, only taken her by surprise. But now he'd done his little disappearing act that none of them could figure out and she could not find him. "Nicki, if I can't see you, I cannot help you." She spun around, trying to feel for him where she had last seen him, but she could not sense him anywhere in the room. The bloodstain pooled on the floor where he had been, and she gazed at it thoughtfully. 

When she was gone, Nicolas gave a sigh of relief. He didn't quite understand how he was able to disappear sometimes, and he couldn't simply on command for he had tried, but he was grateful for the chance when it came. She didn't understand. She wouldn't understand and there was no way to hope that she could stand against Armand with him. He looked down at himself and felt the sodden cloth on his back, wincing as he found a sore spot that had inexplicably opened up. He thought he had healed overnight. He ought to have-his fingers grazed a cold metal thing, and his breath hitched, catching in his throat as he withdrew the barbed spiked thing in the small of his back. It came away bloody with pieces of flesh on it, and he untucked his shirt to inspect it. 

As he felt the wound close up in his back he realized the spike would open up wounds once its victim moved. The bloody animal. 

He pushed the latch on the door closed, even though locking the door would make no difference, then reached behind him in dread. His mind blanked, and he was down on his knees suddenly, his hands shaking, breeches puddled around his thighs as he held the thick spike with pieces of flesh stuck to its dripping barbs of silver. He rested his head against the side of his desk, breathing in and out slowly, willing himself to calm down, but the missed time was there and the noise was in the back of his head, waking up and whispering. His hands shook again and he dropped the thing, staggering as he rose and kicked it away. It rolled across the floor, leaving a bloody red trail and hitting the door as it swung open as if it had never been locked at all. 

Nicolas froze, half-hidden by his desk and sitting against the corner. Armand. Armand. Armand. He couldn't breathe. He tried to shove his breeches back on but his hands were slippery and shaking so badly he couldn't remember what was supposed to happen next. Gravity. No. Cloth. Pull. Hold, then pull. He. He. He couldn't. 

And then the door closed and he closed his eyes tightly in despair, swallowing his fear and waiting for the evening's torture to begin. 

Armand was attired in all black even down to a black shirt, wherever he had found that, and was standing in the center of his room holding a wooden folding cot. With one hand he pulled Nicki's polished cherry desk closer to the visitor's chair by the door, making space enough for the width of the cot. Nicolas stared up at him, now exposed and bleeding in the corner, breeches halfway over his knees, his bloody shirt stained with handprints as he pawed at himself. His hair was a mess as always and he seemed to have stopped breathing. 

"It's all right," Armand said soothingly, and Nicolas couldn't stop the whimper of fear that escaped him as the coven master reached towards him. Where was his fire now? Where was his supposed rebelliousness and his cynicism and his sarcasm? Where was his defiance in the face of this, t:his, of this--he blanked again, and returned to find himself standing naked in his office, Armand behind him licking the blood off his back slowly and luxuriantly. He flinched when those soft caresses reached his buttocks, but Armand--and he was on the floor, and Armand was striking his face, and his nose was bleeding but Armand had a black eye and he couldn't, he couldn't!

The sobs escaped him as he held his hands up to shield his face. He wanted this to stop. He just wanted it to stop. He didn't want to be here. Armand could do what he wanted but he didn't want to be here!

"No you don't," Armand muttered, grabbing him as he began to flicker and hauling him onto the cot, now set up in the back of his room. It fit the alcove perfectly. It would have been nice to sleep here with Lestat on late nights, to not walk home in the bitter cold, or to take a nap in the daytime while Lestat practiced his lines and bothered Nicolas to read out the words he hadn't memorized yet. Nicolas had been slumming it, and it had been glorious, and he hated himself for it. 

"You never disappear from me. Never like that. You cannot hide from me. I always know where you are. So don't even think you can do it. Do you want me to go to Eleni, tell her how you've been whoring yourself to me? Shall I tell the entire company how you've failed them, that you need a thrashing and a buggering to get the inspiration flowing? They'd take turns, I'd imagine," Armand said viciously, turning Nicki onto his back and getting onto the cot above him. He held him down by the wrists and though the violinist's expression was frozen with terror, he still blindly fought against Armand. "Félix can whip you while Arthur fucks you. Or would you prefer the other way around? Do you think they would permit you to finish?"

"Don't!" Nicki cried in his face, and Armand fanged. 

"Shall I leave then? You barely know what's good for you," Armand said derisively. "Shall I leave you to the noise and the silence?"

"Please please please," Nicolas whispered over and over as Armand thrust into him with no warning and no preparation, but there was no beseeching his tormentor. He kept shaking his head, thrashing wildly beneath Armand and throwing him off rhythm. Something was happening to him and he couldn't be here, couldn't witness it, and he couldn't get loose. Armand slapped him in the face. 

"Wake up!" He said, and leaned down to wrench his lips into a biting kiss, full of sharpness and blood being sucked into that perfect mouth. Nicolas felt dizzy again, but he suddenly moaned, Armand touching his cock and making it waken despite his fear. "You will take what I grant you."

Nicolas arched his back in response, a keening sound coming from him as Armand's thrusts hit his prostate in time with his strokes. The coven master drew sharp nails down his chest and sides, smearing him with blood and licking it up slowly as he thrust leisurely, blotting out all conscious thought Nicolas could have. There was something half-remembered happening to him, that pain, that softness on his chest, and the noise was far far away and the static was nowhere, everything was blank blank blank for once, no ringing, no noise, no sound of silence. 

And of course those eyes and those hands capturing him, twisting and stroking and taking and taking and taking. He smiled suddenly, giving up at last, consigning himself to whatever Armand named him. At least it was blank and blank and blank, no noise or static drowning him and fucking up everything he intended to say or do. This was his life now. He could find no escape and there was little on either side of the coin to make it any more bearable except drunken acceptance. 

He stretched, enjoying the surprised look on the imp's face, and closed his eyes as he sank into the whirl of pain and all-consuming rapture that was loving Armand. He would burn in that flame like a crisp cinder and none of it would matter anymore. Armand could be his salvation after all, if only to be his end. 

He bore down on Armand, drawing a surprised moan from the coven master, and clenched around him, making their intercourse even rougher and bloodier. Armand snarled, speeding up and making scratches on Nicki's chest with his fangs as he pitched his hips forward roughly, tossing Nicki's head back with every thrust. The violinist's mouth was open and wet with blood, and but his eyes were turned up in his head. Armand was bumping over his prostate with every stroke, and his cock was beginning to weep droplets of blood. Armand suddenly sped his hand's rhythm up, bringing Nicolas lurching forward into orgasm with a shout. Blood splashed between the two of them, most of it on his chest, and Armand held Nicolas by his oversensitive cock, enjoying the keening pained cries as he continued fucking him. 

Nicolas was blinking and looking down at Armand and all around, and for a moment he looked disconnected from everything, a passenger in a rocking carriage. Armand gave his cock a particularly cruel twist, and his mouth opened in an O of pain, but he closed his eyes as if savoring it in ecstasy. It was too soon a change for Armand to trust it, but the lost look in Nicolas' eyes, that vacant quiet stare that passed for innocence, fell upon Armand and he came with a shudder, leaning over and finishing inside Nicolas. He paused for a moment, tracing patterns in the blood glazing Nicki's chest, and then kissed the dazed, perhaps catatonic violinist on the lips, suckling the blood from them. 

"The rest of the night is yours," he promised with a whisper. "Such is the trade."

Nicolas gave a short bark of laughter, then another, then fell silent, continuing to stare at the ceiling. Armand withdrew and stood, dressing himself quickly and tossing a blanket haphazardly over the violinist. He gazed back at the prone figure on the bed, eyes glazed over and skin covered in blood, then shut the door beside him. 

The click of the door was almost magical, and Nicolas took time to return. He'd been somewhere when the world shook and he just had to give due payment and he could be left alone. He could be left alone and it was just a half hour at most and he could be left alone and free to do what he wanted and he could work for the rest of the night and not worry! He sat up, dizzy, and stumbled over the tangled blanket to reach his desk. 

He grabbed the quill, and gritted his teeth against the static and noise that would come, but instead heard the faint music creeping back slowly, thin and sickly and crippled the way he was. Poisoned. 

But there was no silence or static or noise and there was something in the music that was making him SICK and DARK but at least it was there so he could do this he could keep this going forever! He just needed to endure, so long as the music lasted and he understood the rules, if this was all Armand asked for--he shuddered, thinking of long fingers and grating sharp burning and red curly hair dark as dried blood and that face bearing down on him, the smell of incense. He put his head in his hands, trying to push out the memories, the feelings he felt burned into his skin. But he had to take advantage of tonight! Because tomorrow, tomorrow, it would happen again and again until Armand tired of it and tried something or someone new. Nicolas could delude himself into dividing his evenings like that. All the after-Armands, a breath of air and relief in a world without Lestat, where anything unsettling or unusual or painful was just mad Nicolas' fault. Poor, mad Nicolas. And how had that rumor gotten around? It was his fault, it wasn't just a rumor that Armand encouraged or Félix soberly acknowledged. It was Nicki's fault and he'd let Armand break him long before any of this. The coven master had wriggled a rotten tunnel into his heart and Nicolas would tear himself apart trying to get him out. He did not look forward to the night he would be successful. It would end in fire and blood and tears, inevitable and long-forestalled. He could see it now, if this was his nightly wake up call. Poor mad Nicolas. He picked up his quill. 

To everyone's surprise, Fran√ßois proclaimed the anemic sickly play to emerge from that week to be the best one yet. Some of the players shrieked with raucous laughter as they exaggerated and play acted the bitter plot, having great fun dipping into such extremes. But the music and the story were sour to Eleni's ears, and she turned away from rehearsals, emerging only to direct choreography, when ordinarily she would sit and work in the seats while the orchestra rehearsed. 

This did not go unheeded, and one night he spun towards her, circling as she walked down the hall. 

"Is rehearsal over?" Someone called from the pit. 

Nicolas gave an irritated wave. "Delphine, Paul, Raoul, you're all perfect. Teach the rest," he replied, and pursued Eleni as she walked. 

"What is it, Nicki?" She asked patiently as he flitted around her like a hyperactive bee, making odd gestures and expressions as if contemplating her. She stopped before the library of plays. A new one had been shuffled in there earlier tonight, and she took it out of its locked cubby to file away in the locked library after reading and copying for the orchestra. Nicolas bit his lower lip with one fang, tapping at his chin with the fingers of his hand as she flipped through the papers, and a hungry gleam came over his eye. 

"Well?" He asked, gesturing to the pages and watching her carefully. 

"There are bloodstains. . .," she began to say, and trailed off. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Nicki's hands begin to shake. He grabbed one with the other and met her gaze defiantly. 

"The music?!" He insisted, and despite herself she jumped. He always spoke so gently to her, even when he was upset. This did not look like any fit she had ever seen. She looked down at the sheets of notes, still in that precise scholar's hand, oh what Nicki could have been! He was looking furtively down both ends of the hallway, and the look in his eyes was urgent. She read some music and hummed the notes in her head. 

"Nicki, this is remarkable," she said, breathtaken. "The layering, it's ingenious!"

"I know, right? Right?" He asked with glee, finally cracking into a toothy grin like a child. He suddenly stopped bouncing around her, and a shudder passed over his entire body as he began to tremble. She followed his gaze and realized Armand was advancing down the hall towards them, in discussion with Krulper.

"Nicki, what's wrong? It's only Armand. I thought-" she cut herself off. She thought they had mended their ways. Everyone had heard and spied the moans of pleasure in Nicki's office, Armand leaving, Nicki in a daze after. She had thought it ridiculous they could thought they could hide their love affair, as if this theatre wasn't already a warren of gossips. It had been a week now and they all saw how pliant Armand's visits left Nicolas. How he seemed liberated afterwards, consuming the world and producing work and playing with them with an almost desperate energy. 

"We already, we already, no, no, no," Nicolas whispered under his breath. He seemed frozen in place, and his hands were limp at his sides, his head and shoulders slumped and defeated. 

"Good evening, Eleni, Nicolas," Armand said as Krulper bowed. "Is this a new piece?"

When Nicolas did not reply, staring straight down at the floor and stock still, Armand pretended he had not asked, reaching over to glance at the first few lines. His eyebrows raised and he nodded his approval. 

"Remarkable what some discipline accomplishes. Pardon us," Armand remarked, nodded his farewell to Eleni as he and Krulper continued their conversation. 

Armand was long gone but Nicolas was still frozen to the spot, and Eleni hardly dared disturb him. She shuffled the papers back in and took one of his hands. It was trembling but only slightly, and he let out a breath of relief. 

His expression crumpled slightly, as if he were about to sob, then went blank, exhausted as he leaned on her hand. Then something seemed to twang within him, and low sound rumbled in the back of his throat, then grew into a low chuckle, then a steady laugh that neither rose nor fell not ended. It cut off suddenly as he looked to her with a manic glare, one trembling finger upraised. 

"It's true!" He cried, more to himself than her, laughing again. "We have the whole night!"

"Nicolas, are you well?" Eleni asked as she squeezed his hand. He was ice cold and she suddenly noticed the veins on his face. "When was the last time you fed?"

"True to his word, true to his word," Nicolas muttered to himself as he nodded his head back and forth. He looked back up at her, that ceaseless hum interspersing his sentences. "I don't know, it doesn't matter, does it?" Another strangled laugh, and she met his desperate gaze, his strained smile. 

"Of course it matters, Nicki! You must take care of yourself," she said, and tugged him towards the alley door, grabbing his coat along the way. He was always like this, unstable and sometimes irrational when he was hungry. She had never known a fledgling to resist the Thirst like this, but at least he never refused their outings together. Anything to get out of the theatre. He talked to Félix less and less these days for some reason, and when he went out he notified her instead of his bodyguard. Félix would say nothing of it, and bore Nicki's verbal abuse with dignified resignation. 

Nicki shrugged on his black coat wordlessly and she took his proferred arm, offered automatically like the gentleman he'd been raised and taught to be. 

"What happened between you and Armand tonight, Nicki?" She asked bluntly when they had left the theatre district. He was tugging her wordlessly towards the river. 

"Don't leave me alone with him," Nicolas said without looking at her. He peered a little too long at the people around them and ignored her tugs at him to stop. All she could do was imply he was drunk, her dear cousin, on the sauce again. It was a ruse she was employing more and more these days, she realized.

"He is our coven master, Nicolas. We have nothing more to fear from him," she lied, and he flinched and his arm trembled in her grasp. "Don't you permit him in your room every night?" It had been almost two weeks now, and they were starting to hear music too, not just Nicki's moans of blind passion. From Armand they never heard anything at all, but such were the powers and ways of the old ones. 

"It hurts, I, when I think of it, if it already happened why does it hurt?" He asked no one in particular. "Every single night! But it passes! I have a whole evening to myself! A promise!"

"What happened to you, it, it was a mistake," Eleni said hesitantly, thinking he was talking about Les Innocents again, or trying to reconcile it with his affair with Armand. "But it means you are at the theatre with us now, making wondrous arts and music. I know it bears you great pain, but I confess I am so glad it brought you to us, even if I wish it were another way."

Nicolas stopped walking abruptly and stared at her. She turned, having walked out of his arm's length, and raised her eyebrows. 

"You-" he began, then his head flicked away, raising a little as if to scent something in the air. "I need, I need to-" he broke off again, rushing in a blur over the wall beside them, and she was relieved no one was in their immediate vicinity to see it. She found him lurking in the shadows, watching a young man about his age with flaxen hair picking kindling out of the muddy riverbank. They had walked quite a ways out and this part of the water was not paved. 

In the blink of an eye Nicolas was upon him, pouncing on him wholly as if wrapping his body around the mortal, even his legs trapping the man's. The bundle of sticks clattered loudly and echoed off a far bridge, and there was a guttural scream. She rushed over quickly. A fledgling in desperate hunger could get them all discovered, and she had to be watchful. 

But when she neared the pair, she could smell what was wrong before she saw it. Too much blood had been spilt. Something had gone wrong, something--she gasped, covering her mouth with her hands. Nicolas was sucking and licking at an enormous ragged gash he had made from the corner of the mortal's jaw down to his collarbone, exposing even his trachea. Eleni could see the struggling mortal still trying to breathe even as he bled out. Nicolas worried over the wound like an animal, making agitated sounds, and his front was bathed in blood, his linen shirt sopping wet with the splash of it and every part of his breeches not stained with the muck and mud of the riverbank where he knelt. Finally he seemed to focus, clamping down over one of the major blood vessels, and in seconds his skin bloomed into color, the mortal's paling. Suddenly a giant shudder tore through Nicolas and he moaned, falling to his side next to the mortal, limp as the corpse beside him. The boy had not died well or painlessly. 

"Nicki! Nicki what is wrong!" She whispered urgently, turning him onto his back gently, aghast at the blood that covered his face and flowed down his neck. Such a waste. she had never seen him feed like this. He was devoted to the hunt, sometimes building fantastical narratives before they set upon their victims together. But he was tidy and neat and generally his kills themselves were unremarkable, despite his bravado for the risk of discovery. Gabrielle had taught him well. But he had never been brutal. Never savage like this, so wasteful of blood and so mindless. She wasn't sure Nicolas wouldn't have attacked her too, slavering as he was over the dying mortal. 

And now he panted shallowly, staring up with the stars reflected in his eyes. His bloodied hands were limp at his sides and his head lolled as he tried to keep his vision steady on the night sky. His eyes kept rolling into the back of his head, and he did not notice Eleni hovering. She touched his face and his hands, noting the hot blood newly pounding into him, but then realized the mortal had died before Nicki collapsed.

"Nicki! Nicki!" She cried, frightened. "Nicki can you hear me? Please wake up!" She begged, not sure how to bring him back, not sure what to do. "Listen to me. You've taken the death into you, and that you must never ever do again!"

"Stars, Eleni?" Nicolas murmured softly, voice gentle and innocent. His expression was no longer hazy and briefly he focused on her, and in his gaze was the calm and sensibility that perhaps he didn't even have in his mortal days. He smiled vaguely, full of light and simple joy, and her heart broke a little for him. 

"Yes. The stars. They're very bright, aren't they?" She agreed softly, and stroked his hair, tucking it out of the way. She would have to brush it again when they returned. His hair was so curly and his natural part preferred to stay. 

"Going away," Nicolas whispered, one hand reaching upwards towards the sky. Eleni grabbed it tightly. 

"Stay with me here, please, Nicki, stay with me! Don't go away. I need you," she confessed, holding his hand tightly and kissing it. He looked over at her, confused, and sat up, strength and purpose flowing back into his bones. 

He looked around, then stilled when he saw the bloodbath he was in. 

"What happened?" He asked warily. He was unprepared for her slap on the cheek. 

"What have you been told about feeding? You don't take the death into you, lest you follow your victim there!" She said hotly. "You don't let yourself be discovered!"

"I was being careful!" Nicolas said, bewildered and rubbing at his cheek. "I don't know what happened! I don't remember doing this!" He looked down at his bloody clothes, then at the corpse beside him, and covered his mouth with a giggle. It was one of the old mad ones from very early, the joyous laughter of a lost fool, not the dark unsettling and ceaseless laughs that seemed to eat away at himself. Eleni gave him a warning look. 

"I was just, I was hungry," Nicolas muttered, getting to his feet slowly and assaying. He giggled again. "I did that?"

"Yes, you did!" Eleni scolded, catching him as he stumbled in the mud, his legs still weak. His smile made her relent however. He had not smiled in so long. "What were you thinking?"

"I was, I was angry," Nicolas pondered, his mind clear now. He winced. He was still sore all over, but the Death had numbed him momentarily, a brief moment of respite. "I wanted to, it was like I was looking for something. Trying to express something. Only I couldn't."

"Not like that," Eleni replied, taking his hand firmly in hers. 

"Oh Eleni, no one discovered us! It'll be a messy murder in the river. You know I'm not like this. I don't know what came over me," he said gaily, sounding like the sane gentleman he sometimes was, when they could pretend. They were walking on the crude stone path, and he stopped and held up a hand. "I'll show you," he whispered, and darted off. She gave chase, worried what would happen, and found him neatly feeding upon a scullery maid behind a pile of lumber. He propped her up against it as if she had fallen asleep, and he looked in the bloom of health as he kissed her hand in thanks. She was dead, of course, with a slight wound at her neck. But it had been clean and it had been neat and it had been like his usual kills. 

He stepped back from his handiwork and gestured to it. "See? I can control myself." He only ever played with his food afterwards. Hence the stray blood stains. Feeding was too intimate and transcendental an experience for him to delay. 

Eleni looked at him in doubt, and then nodded her concession. "Let us get you cleaned up then," she said, and sighed as she took his bloody sleeve in her arm. 

"So I take it you don't care for The Bridled Cur?" Nicolas asked in a normal tone as if they were in polite society out for a stroll. 

"Why do you say that?" Eleni kept them to the shadows best they could, making him draw his coat around him. 

"You're not attending rehearsals unless you have to," Nicolas replied, studying her expression in thought and letting her lead him, even though it looked as if she were hanging on his arm as her escort. "And you don't--" He made a strange twirling, flighty motion with his unoccupied hand, and Eleni felt a curious echo of recognition. "You know."

"I don't know," Eleni replied evasively but honestly. She always loved Nicki's work, but this one was too angry, too sour, too sharp. It felt poisonous and she truly felt wicked and irredeemable when she danced it. She'd assigned the lead dancer role to someone else. 

"You do know. Usually you're, you're," Nicolas struggled to say, repeating the gesture as if his fingers were flowering in the air, and suddenly Eleni recognized it, but she had not seen it in decades when she was young and her heart was hers. "Compress, leverage, tense." He began to sing, his voice clear and strong as any young man, and most of all earnest. "Ti se mellei esenane..."

"How, how could you know that?" Eleni gasped, stopping in the street as Nicolas walked ahead. He turned back with a quizzical expression on his face. 

"What do you mean? Every rehearsal, you're, you know," he said, repeating the gesture and the song, that old old song, and Eleni felt the chorostasi beneath her bare feet, the wheat crisping and crushing and rolling as the young boys and girls whirled around. And Nicolas sang wistfully as they stood, his eyes misting over as he sang the tune she herself forgot. Demetrios and Hector both eyeing her as they danced the ballos and the song whirling around her on the island. The lyre and the flute flowing around them, and she gave a flirtatious laugh as Demetrios gestured towards her, his fingers flourishing in the air as they whirled in the firelight--

"Stop! Stop, Niko, wait," she said, forgetting herself, shushing him with a finger over his lips and startling him from the reverie. "I've never told, how, how could-"

"I hear you. When you're sitting there going over steps or rearranging those storks you call dancers nowadays, that's the song, you're telling them to feel the weight, to leverage it and flow with the ocean breeze." He looked completely sensible and even a little sly, as if teasing her. "Did you think no one could hear you? Did you think I wouldn't be listening for all the sounds in the world?"

"Yes, but," she stopped, bit her lower lip on hesitation and looked up at him so he would know she was unsettled. "Nicki. I don't say that to the dancers. I don't repeat it to myself out loud." She could see the panic rising in his eyes, and he was starting to shake his head and back away from her. She caught him by the elbows and held him gently but firmly. "Nicki, look at me, my darling. Do you know you were speaking in Greek? You have been reading me during rehearsal, haven't you? Reading my thoughts?" But she had not thought of Demetrios, his fine hands or his wolf-like grin, nor the way the firelight looked brushing over Hector's curls as they lay beneath the stars. 

"No!" Nicolas said, looking shocked even by the thought of such an invasion. "I would never, Eleni, I have the highest respect and affection for you. I don't know how to read anyone's thoughts. Haven't we gone over this before? I'm merely a fledgling. Too young, too unlearned." His expression turned dark and bitter. "And if I wanted to read anyone's thoughts, yours would not be the ones I would pursue!"

"Nicolas, please listen to me. I think you are doing it without knowing it. You must learn how to use it and control it or it will confuse you and drive you mad," she persisted, but he tore himself away from her and ground the top of his head against a nearby wall in frustration, as if he could push against it. "You underestimate your abilities, Nicki, you always have! I've seen it happen, fledglings who pick up on the thoughts of others, of everyone, and can no longer distinguish their own. They go mad, they don't know who they are, they think they are mortal and venture into the sun. I could not bear to lose you like that."

"Well, at least you're not losing me like that," Nicolas muttered, staring at the cobbles. He had not moved from forming a hypotenuse against the wall, and now sounded merely petulant. "Armand tries me every day, you can be sure of it, but I will strive to control myself, mademoiselle," he said, not without distaste, "though Heaven knows how doubtful all of you are of that."

"It's not just that," Eleni said, hesitant to say more. It terrified her, this intimate confirmation of what she was beginning to suspect, and the hint of something much more. Nicolas read people around him without realizing it and without restraint, unconscious even of the addition of knowledge in his mind. Did he hear everything? She had tried to read him once and found the cacophony too confusing and too loud, and she thought it a wonder he could even think straight. Perhaps he didn't. But the idea of a fledgling from a powerful bloodline with delicate sensibilities and broken psyche, letting his mental powers run free without even knowing it, paled next to what she might tell him next. It was not enough that he might even be able to read past Armand's shields. The balalaika music, Felix's Dulot. It was how he got in, how deep, how at all. Because Eleni did not remember the song. She had heard it when she was very young, a mere child of five, from her grandmother. The song she knew and hummed to herself in her head was a quicker and more modern tune. 

The melody that Nicolas had set the words to, and had hummed as if reliving her childhood life in a trance, was long buried and lost in her memory almost a century ago, sung last by her grandmother. She had never learned it, but she could recognize it the moment he began. Nicolas wasn't just reading thoughts of the moment or what someone was saying to themselves in their head. Nicolas was reading whole people.

But he just looked at her expectantly, shirt sopping with blood and looking so lost and so young, that she sighed and shook her head. 

"Never mind. We are here for you. We will watch over you always," she promised him, taking him by the arm again. He scowled but said nothing as he bowed his head, and she knew he would ask again later, when she needed something and his questions could not be refused. 

 

The following night, dressed in all black, Armand visited a violinist who was not in the mood. Nicolas had deliberately placed himself before the harpsichord at the stage, where some actors were rehearsing to themselves and Eleni taught a pair of dancers a few advanced principles. Nicolas did not need Armand tonight to be in the music, and with every fiber of his being he lied to himself, forcing himself to pretend and forget their arrangement just so he could stay sane. 

He spotted Armand standing at the side door, and had to grip his wrist to keep his hand steady. Where was his violin? He'd left it back in the office. He could rush back, and leave on a coach bound for Amsterdam or Calais. It wouldn't take very long. Eleni would understand once he wrote to her from a safe place. Or Vienna even, what better place to stay? He gave Armand a perfunctory nod of acknowledgment as the other performers bowed to the coven master. 

The youth with the angelic face--Nicolas wanted to ruin that face, smear it with tears and scratch the eyes out and cut the tongue off--returned a nod to them all, but his gaze rested on Nicolas, to turned back to his work as if he could ignore everything else. Armand let the fury tick over inside as he made his way to his composer. He was dressed in a rough linen shirt today, so unlike his usual finery, and long tubes of cloth enclosed his fine calves, the sans culottes of the political. Visually he was always stunning, looking strangely boyish for even his youthful age of twenty-one, nestled in clothing meant for the older and more worldly. 

For all his Parisian sophistication and look of intelligent sensibility, for all his jewels and silken finery, he looked so young and unspoiled, his curly hair boyish and his mouth innocently kissable, that Armand sometimes hated to hear Nicolas talk. The words coming from that vessel could be so bitter and crude and cruel. It didn't suit him. But that didn't mean Armand was ashamed, for he desired power over Nicolas and pure need and adoration and love in return, and with little else in Paris to engage or direct him, Nicolas was fast becoming his favorite obsession. And tonight, without all the usual trappings of finery, he looked so innocent and unfinished that Armand could hardly wait to ruin him.

He noticed the composer grip his wrist to steady himself, and met the silent plea in his eyes. Nicolas wanted to delay their union! He was deep in the work and had gone out here to do it just so Armand could not shove it aside and take him against his own desk, screaming into the wood with the blade of the quill sharpener pinning his hand to the surface. Armand liked to circle his finger over the hole it had left there and watch Nicolas try to control his trembling.

"M'sieur de Lenfent, a moment of your time? I require a word with you about next week's arrangements," Armand said quite clearly so that everyone would hear. 

"Is old age blinding your vision already, that you cannot see I am in the middle of producing content for our endeavors?" Nicolas asked in irritation as he bent over the work again, but his quill was dry and he wrote nothing, staring at the page and waiting for Armand's reply. 

The others pretended not to watch as Armand slowly approached Nicolas, letting his steps be heard. When he had come alongside the harpsichord his hand shot out and clenched the wrist of Nicki's writing hand in a painful vise-like grip, causing the vampire to gasp and twist around it at once. Their faces neared each other and Armand narrowed his eyes. The others pretended to busy themselves with trivialities, looking away and afraid to meet each other’s gazes, complicit in their director’s abuse for fear of the coven master’s wrath. Some doubted Nicolas could even remember much of it, for all the frenzy and madness that visited him occasionally. At least, such were the lies they told themselves. Even François Abbayé said nothing, and managed to restrain himself from leering or making any snide comments.

"Everything you do has a consequence. Do you really want to see what happens if you continue to deny me tonight?" he asked under his breath as if looking forward to the idea. 

Nicolas' eyes were wide and he shook his head almost imperceptibly, dropping the quill with a clatter on the lid of the harpsichord. Armand released him and turned his back, expecting Nicolas to follow like a whipped dog. He was right. 

When they reached Nicki's room he grabbed the violinist and shoved him roughly against his closed door, tearing the shirt and pants off him before he could even begin the fight. 

"Eleni dresses you in small clothes?" Armand asked in surprise with a small laugh, and Nicolas stared at him in disbelief, pinned to his own door by Armand's hand at his throat.

"Just get it over with, demon," he spat, more than in his right mind tonight. "Sooner I can relieve your stinginess over paying for a whore, the sooner I can get back to something that really matters."

Armand's expression remained placid, and Nicolas realized too late that certain words can never be taken back. He had simply been so angry, so furious, and he had thought of all the ways he could prevent Armand from continuing this, bargains, threats, something! Every night he could feel himself slipping a little more into madness, where he would remember the pain and the shame and humiliation as background noise in the vortex of screams and where he could tell himself he wasn't in his right mind to consent, that he wasn't an accomplice in these crimes, that he wasn't gagging for it already, as Armand liked to say. He was so much more experienced in these matters than Nicolas had ever known or dreamed. He hated the part of himself that was perversely curious as to how much more, and whether there was an extreme to which he would come to love and need it. He tried not to wonder whether he already did. He had been human once, and so hopeful, and he had tried to take what pleasure he could out of it as much as he did not want to, as much as it shamed him. 

Keeping Nicki's gaze, Armand tore the small clothes directly off them, the cloth ripping into pieces, bits of lint and thread drifting in the air. Nicolas watched them float, trying to find something else to focus on, but Armand brought him back with painful squeezes on his cheeks, down his sides. He would have finger marks to add to the growing collection on his torso. Armand loved to feel him bend and writhe underneath. 

Long fingers curled around his balls, toying with them and making him stifle a moan, sealing his lips closed. He would not give in tonight. No matter how painful and humiliating it got, he would hold on to what was left of his sanity. He had not the strength and energy to fight every single night, but he would try whenever he could. He didn't know any other way to live with himself, to endure this and still be him. It wasn't as if he would even scar. 

Armand wrenched his lips open with his teeth, sucking on his tongue and drawing out his breath through the kiss, leaving Nicolas gasping and unable to stop himself from moaning as Armand sank one long digit into him. Dry, always dry, why? He choked down a hysterical giggle at the rhyme, and stared at Armand, still trying to cope and recover from the pain and shock. 

Immediately his world electrified and his toes curled as Armand's finger pressed against the secret nub inside, sensitive from night after night of exhaustive attention. Nicolas could come just from a few strokes now, if Armand commanded it, and he hated himself for it. If anyone knew, Armand had said, that Poor Mad Nicolas was just a common whore, hole and cock ready for whatever pleasure deigned to use them, they would never want anything to do with him again. It was merciful that Armand could minister to his needs, was it not? And Nicolas wanted to scream at him and hurl things because it wasn't true, it wasn't true, but if that was the case, why did he grow hard so obediently, his body betraying every fiber of will in him, every rise of disgust, and why did he come at Armand's call, at Armand's touch? It hadn't been true, once.

Armand had shown him in the mirror what he looked like, a barely recognizable ruin, a young man covered in blood and scratches and bruises, cock purple and swollen and straining, bobbing as Armand thrust into him, looking like the immaculate angel ministering to the mad sex addict whose wanton lips dripping with blood were half-open and always ready. He couldn't meet his own gaze in the mirror, and Armand had forced him to, yanking his face upwards by his hair and making him growl, "more, M'sieur." Something had cracked in his voice and Armand had noticed, because he released Nicki’s hair and the violinist kept staring at his own gaze as if at a stranger, gasping and moaning and pressing his face against the mirror as Armand plowed into him with sharp, hard thrusts.

It had not been a good night, and he had not done any work for the rest of it. He couldn't bear to soil the papers with his presence, to venture outside his room so anyone might sniff and see what he really was, and take him as they chose. He sat huddled in the corner of the cot where Armand left him, staring at the corner and rocking to himself. There was no bath or water or sea or ocean he could drown himself in that would ever make him feel clean again.

He had broken the mirror and kept trying to open and re-open wounds in his wrists, but they only healed over, slower and slower each time. He had to find a way out. He had to. He would not allow them to know what he really was, and he could not bear another night of such an exercise in truth. It would come out in the blood, he was sure of it, his filthy blood that Lestat had poisoned with his talk of goodness that made Nicolas dare to hope again. He couldn't look at the blood or the evil would pour into him instead of away and through the floor and down to the catacombs and earth with all of Diderot's catalogued creatures. If he cut the blood away from him and looked the other way he could be free of it and drift elsewhere, perhaps beyond into that warm place. 

Félix found him the next evening passed out with a broken armoire mirror, a mirrored shard in his hand, and blood puddled around him. It was adding to the growing collection of blood stains on his office floor. Nicolas would not rise, and he was terrified to look and risk that Félix had simply been waiting for Nicolas to learn the truth about himself before abandoning him for his purer God. It took Eleni, Laurent, and Félix to take him out and watch him, making sure he was undetected as he fed and healed. He had splintered in the alley, forgetting and thinking he was mortal again and they were coming to take him, and Félix had to hit him before he could start to scream. They carried him home that night and tied him to his chair so he could not hurt himself. He said nothing the entire time, making small starts at noise in the back of his throat while he stared into nothing and Eleni sat with him, patting his hand uselessly. 

"Yes, show me how much you love that," Armand said with a cupid's tender smile, and Nicolas whimpered a soft "fuck you" as Armand reached for his cock with his other hand. He squirmed away from his touch, but Armand slammed up against his hardening cock, crushing it and making him see stars, and bound his arms together behind his back, wrists to elbows. He forced Nicolas down to the floor, shoving him across the wooden boards and against the mirror he had reinstalled in the armoire, now reinforced with an iron grate so that Nicolas could not break it. Their images were cross-hatched over with black metal bars in the shapes of diamonds, and Nicolas reflected that it was true to life that he should be in a prison even in a mirror world. Armand yanked his hair up and knelt on his calves, making him grunt in pain, and pulled his arse rising so his body formed a triangle. 

"Look. Look at yourself," Armand said snidely. Nicolas closed his eyes and Armand smashed his face into the wood, breaking his nose and making him bite his lip. Stunned and bleeding, he raised his eyes to meet Armand's because he could not meet his own, and hated and hated and hated.

It was only then that he noticed the black velvet money pouch Armand had set on his desk, and bucked up in alarm as Armand withdrew a small golden ball, about the size of a walnut, smooth and round and gleaming in the candlelight. 

"I had these cast by a fine goldsmith," Armand explained, and too late Nicki saw the warm dish of tallow, watched as Armand coated the ball in it thickly, obscuring the polished shine. Armand raised it up so Nicolas could see, and then his hand disappeared behind. He could feel something warm pressing against his opening, and he tensed, trying to scoot forwards or kick, and Armand slapped him on the left buttock so hard he jolted in pain. And then those cold nails pried him open and something round and smooth began to stretch him, and he couldn't help tensing, squeezing his eyes shut and clenching his jaw as it stretched him impossibly wide and then popped through to the other side. It felt strange, and he would have said it had disappeared had Armand not patted him to make him feel where it had landed. 

"What new devilry is this?" He panted, a sheen of blood sweat coating his forehead. Armand watched and smiled tenderly but did not answer, pulling a second ball from the bag and dipping it in the tallow. At least there was tallow. Nicolas felt the second invasion, his body freezing up again as his mind blanked. He could not have fought even if he thought it wise at the moment, such was his fear and trauma. Instead, he felt and heard the dull clink as the second joined the first ball in his loins. He squirmed a little, trying to settle into the feeling, and to his dismay, shook and trembled when one of the balls slid against his prostate. He bit his lip so he would not cry out, and tried to shift it, whether to gain more or less sensation, he was too ashamed to answer. Armand smiled that cupid's smile again and reached for a third ball, dipping it in tallow and smoothing some of it against the crease between Nicki's buttocks, greasing his balls and his perineum. It made Nicolas moan softly despite himself, and he glared at Armand, his gaze freezing and unfocused as the third ball was eased in, making him feel heavy and drowsy. 

"How many are there?!" Nicolas choked out at last as Armand withdrew a fourth golden orb, and gasped, his eyes rolling up in his head as this one entered and placed more pressure on his prostate. He gave in to a small whimper, pressing his lips together tightly as he tried to resettle his knees and get a better position, but he nearly collapsed as the balls moved with his own shifting. 

"As many as I decide you can take," Armand said, and withdrew a fifth golden ball, as round as Nicki's astonished eyes. "You are enjoying it, no? Are you asking for more?" His hand snaked around to tug roughly at Nicki's cock, rising to attention slowly as pressure was repeatedly applied to his prostate. The violinist nearly yelled, and Armand held him down by the hip as he inserted the fifth ball, the head of his cock painfully grazing the wooden floorboards, and he bucked, trying to get away and trying to recover from the enormous feeling of the balls within him. 

"Shh," Armand said, petting Nicolas' flanks gently, making him wince from the bruises on his sides. He held up a sixth ball, slick with grease, and said, "say 'more, M'sieur'."

Nicolas pressed his lips together hard, only to utter a muffled howl against Armand's hand as his cock was tugged roughly and painfully, something cold clanking against the base of it and around his balls. He struggled from side to side on his shoulders and tried to use his head as a wedge to see what Armand had done, but he felt sick with pain and was still dizzy. He panted, trying to get his mind focused and clear, when Armand slid a sixth ball inside him, but held it at the entrance, stretching it painfully. He had not prepared Nicolas, and every entry had been agony, but this was simply torture.

"Say it," Armand commanded, sliding it in and out, not caring that his fingers were scraping against sensitive walls and widening the hole even more. 

"More, M'sieur," Nicolas choked out frantically as Armand increased the speed, breaking down into a silent sob of relief when the sixth dropped in quickly, clanking dully against the others. He felt awkward and ungainly, and the weight in his loins made everything heavy. It was difficult to think, and he just remembered he had to check his straining cock when Armand raised another ball and said, "last one."

"Thank you," Nicolas breathed in a sigh of relief despite himself, grateful even for this mercy. He could take one more, just one more, he thought. "More, M'sieur." And it went in easily, and he felt more full than he ever had, and swollen, and the walls of his pelvis strained and shoved the seven balls together uncomfortably and his scalp itched as they rolled against his prostate occasionally. He thought he felt his teeth tingle. 

Armand brushed a delicate finger over the head of his cock, making his gasp and buck upwards from the pain of his straining erection. He had not wanted to be hard, but kneeling here, hands behind his back with seven balls made of gold inside him, constantly pressuring the secret electric node inside him, he could barely even control himself. His ass felt like a separate part of him, and he struggled not to think of it, to imagine going about his business like a normal person.

"I have reflected that you still fight and struggle against me," Armand said. "When I thought we had an arrangement and we had an understanding." He stood, taking the bag with him, but when Nicolas tried to kneel upright he was violently pinned back down to the floor with one boot pressed firmly against the back of his neck, grinding it into the floor and choking him. Nicolas bared his teeth, tears forming in the corners of his eyes. The jolt had violently unsettled the balls inside him and he had thought and hoped they were done. He was shivering uncontrollably now. "I must know you are not going to try tonight's tricks again. You must understand you are mine. And I may take whatever I wish from our golden goose." He nudged Nicki's rear with his boot and laughed softly when Nicki's face reddened in realization of the joke with the golden balls. The humiliation spread and he glared at Armand, trying to move as little as possible. 

Meanwhile, Armand sat himself on the cot and tossed the black velvet purse idly in his hand. Coins clinked inside. Nicolas looked sideways at him curiously, and rose a little on his knees. He was not kicked down, and to his shame he spotted himself in the mirror, cock straining red and purple with abuse, the cock ring Armand had installed gleaming golden. He felt like a harem boy, and he looked away, to Armand's soft laughter. The balls nudged against each other inside him and he clenched his jaw trying to get used to the feeling. Whatever trials he had left tonight he could endure. He could not give Armand the satisfaction of begging for mercy or release. 

"You seem to require me merely for two forms of entertainment rather than possession," he sneered, surprised to find his voice steady as he knelt before Armand, trying to sound as dignified as possible with 7 heavy golden balls inside him weighing him down and his cock jutting out like a crude sign. "The first to recreate the nursery rhymes a child your visual age seems to suckle and the second so you do not need to waste our profits on any boy whores." He spat at Armand's feet, telling himself not to quail at the eyes that narrowed at him. 

"I can be generous with my mercy, Nicolas," Armand said softly, very still as he rose and caressed the fledgling's neck and squeezing his Adam's apple. "You seem determined to test that generosity every evening. Let me show you how generous I can be."

Dread settled in the pit of Nicki's stomach at those words even as he allowed himself a tiny ounce of hope. It was soon extinguished when Armand stuffed his mouth full with cloth and bound a cloth gag over it to keep it in. He tried to yell in protest, and only choked and gagged on the cloth instead. It was a big and solid enough chunk that it stretched his lips open, and it was beginning to be stained red with his drool. 

Armand fastened a belt around Nicki's neck and shoved him hard to the floor, knocking his head against the wood and disorienting him. 

"When you are obedient, you are rewarded. When you do what I say, you are rewarded. When you are mine, you are rewarded. And I am generous with my rewards," Armand promised him, kissing him on the forehead. Nicolas almost growled, supported only by his chin against the floor. He felt like a worm against the ground, only his knees allowing him to move. He reminded himself to expect the rolling heaviness inside him. "Now then," Armand said, giving a tug of the leash that briefly choked Nicki. "Crawl as you can in a circle and you shall be rewarded." 

Nicolas stared up at him and struggled to rise. Had he gone insane? He tried to shove himself against the coven master, and was roundly boxed in the ears. His head ringing, he yelled into the gag when he felt a cold hand roughly and painfully tugging at his hard cock. It was too painful to be enjoyable, but his body was still responding as it writhed, the balls inside him rolling and brushing against his prostate, and with a yell and a shake he prepared to come, only to feel oddly restrained and halted, his penis hurting, himself on the edge. What was happening? Bewildered, he gave a single questioning whimper and jerked forward into Armand's hand, only to have the coven master laugh mockingly at him. The laugh was so soft, so gentle, and Nicolas could feel his fury rising. He was vaguely aware that he kept trembling and shaking, and tried to put the feeling beneath that away, how deeply vulnerable and far more pinioning this felt than any other abuse Armand had inflicted. 

But then the hand was back again, bringing him off so roughly he screamed silently, trying to squirm away from the hand and only making his grip stronger and the balls roll around more, each blunt contact a spark of fire behind his eyes. He was so close, so close, and he felt his lungs heave and he felt himself jerking and thrusting his hips forward, and he couldn't come. Still, he couldn't come, and his torso shook with silent sobs, and he begged in his head because at least Armand would not hear, through his mind or through the gag. 

"Now. Are you going to defy me again tonight, or are you going to obey and be rewarded?" Armand whispered in his ear. He took deep breaths through his nose and nodded, squirming and kneeling and crawling around the room haltingly, having to stop to catch his breath against the feeling of heaviness inside him. It seemed forever to make one loop around the small office, and he rested his cheek against the floor at Armand's feet, grateful for even this little rest when he should have been angry at so much else. He had not the energy for anger anymore, he realized. He could no longer fight, and by gagging him Armand took away the only other way he could resist convincingly to himself and anyone else.

He felt Armand running a soothing hand down his back, petting his rear, and flinched when those fingers picked at his tightly clenched hole, and slid something sharp and decidedly not ball-shaped inside. He was afraid to move, afraid to tear anything, and when he heard a clink and a rustle of velvet, he realized with horror what it had been. Armand held a gold coin before his eyes and said, "I am neither a miser nor a spendthrift as you think me to be. I am generous in my rewards and you have done well. Not a single thing dropped in your first lap." Nicolas' eyes widened. First lap? 

"You're a natural at this. And it's only natural I reward the particular organ responsible for this feat. He smiled at Nicolas, enjoying the further widening of his eyes as he sliced another coin into him, where he felt it clink against the golden balls already there. Dear God. "You are passionate but temperamental, and I do appreciate this governance of your high spirits. A good servant would demonstrate his gratefulness with another loop, energetic and enthusiastic. He could even be rewarded for the encore. Perhaps every lap will earn him a reward until such time his master deems the creature's efforts completed for the day."

Nicolas groaned in exasperation, but when Armand's hand reached down for his abused cock, he scrambled forwards like a worm, losing all dignity as he crawled and choked on his own tears, barely able to think beyond wriggling forward and ignoring the terrible heaviness that blanked out all thought inside him with each crawling step. He thought he recognized a door, and thought of crashing through it, but suddenly another coin entered him and he stumbled, only to have his arse slapped and his body shoved forward with a heavy slap on the buttocks, almost dislodging everything, and then it seemed all he could do was to catch up with the invisible fear of not continuing to make the loop. Every time another coin entered and added to the heaviness inside him that was driving him mad, he felt a burst of gratefulness that he had performed pleasingly, that he had completed another round, that he avoided punishment and displeasure and the torture that came with it, the agony and terror and blinding helplessness. 

Finally he could move no longer. His coins were coming slower and he felt impossibly full, bulging and pregnant with reward, and he collapsed forwards, only to hiss in pain when his cock brushed the floor and jolt violently onto his back to avoid it. His blood-soaked gag dripped drool down the sides of his face, and in an exhausted haze he recognized Master, M'sieur. Armand. 

He shook his head slowly, wanting to say he couldn't, that he appreciated his lord's mercy and generosity but be really really couldn't, well, anything. His limp legs trembled in exhaustion, and he dripped with blood sweat, his hair plastering to his face and shoulders. 

Armand looked immaculate and loving above him, surveying his wretched state and gracing him with a benevolent smile. Yes, yes, I can rest now, no more coins, I can take them out and rest and I've done well, look at that angel's smile. And then he felt his legs being lifted, was he going to massage feeling back into his thighs? And then his world exploded in pain and sensation and pleasure and he screamed as Armand took him roughly, cock shoving into him and churning the coins and balls that already stuffed him full. 

He sobbed openly, exhausted in will now too, unable to fight, and told himself he could excuse himself today and give in, just today, just today, he'd already given in so much. But Armand yanked on his cock in time with his thrusts and his screams became frantic and shrill, and he began to thrash back and forth, his hair whipping wildly as he desperately sought relief where there was none to be had. He struggled to gasp in air, but the vicious tugs Armand gave him choked off his wails and he convulsed violently, begging incoherently behind the gag as tears spilled from his eyes, bathing his face in blood as he crested into orgasm again and again, Armand stopping each time as he continued to thrust as if he could shove into Nicki's throat from his rear. 

"You have nothing to hope for but what I give you," Armand was saying, giving a final shove, shivering as he filled Nicki with blood semen, closing his eyes and savoring the trembling shaking wretch beneath his hands. He reached into the bag a final time and brought out a long polished golden shape that flared out with a ring at the end, and he replaced his softening cock with this, stoppering Nicolas' arse and keeping everything inside tightly secured, his muscles naturally spasming to periodically drive the plug into him and make him shudder. He barely felt it, moaning still in one weak endless sob of pain. Armand laced his breeches and knelt beside the tortured violinist, brushing his hair to one side and taking hold of his cock again. 

"Shh," he said softly as Nicki's brow knitted in panic and he cried desperately to no one, shaking his head and sobbing into the gag with abandon. Armand's hand grazed against Nicki's sensitive cock and he jolted, arching off the floor and trying to thrust into the grasp and escape it at the same time, his moans frantic and bewildered. 

Armand gripped the base of Nicki's cock, leaving it free, and shoved the golden plug in a way that touched deep within the fledgling, making him shout and shudder, his back arching as blood semen seeped out of his cock. He made a confused groan when Armand repeated the action, for it had none of the pleasure or closure of orgasm. The coven master bent down and licked the blood slowly from around his weeping cock, now soft, and Nicolas sobbed openly, exhausted and confused as Armand removed the cock ring and began to lick the blood off him in broad strokes like a cat grooming its kitten. Nicolas shuddered and shivered, and he writhed beneath the coven master, uncertain what was wanted before he would be allowed to climax, fearful of what would come next. He had never ejaculated without coming before, and it frightened him that Armand knew his body better than he did. 

"Shh," Armand said soothingly, caressing him and licking his tears away. "You won't be coming anytime soon. I must leave for Vienna for a week, so you have one week's respite to realize just how much you need me." He smiled as if he knew a secret Nicolas didn't, which was probably true. "I will know if you remove this," he said, giving the golden plug a little tap and making Nicki's eyes roll towards the back of his head and his eyelids flutter, unable to stop his entire body from trembling all over. "I will be the only one to take it from you. You are not to touch yourself in the meantime. Do you see?" Humiliatingly, Armand lifted Nicolas, now clean, against his chest so that his spread legs, limp and open for any takers, revealed what Armand had done. When he had milked Nicki's cock, he had affixed a leather loop around the base of his cock and his balls, constricting them. It could not be removed without removing the plug as well. Nicolas closed his eyes against fresh tears, and when Armand removed his gag his mouth remained open and slack. He had nothing left tonight beyond gulping in what air he could to cope. 

Armand kissed him on the side of his temple, and lifted him in his arms from the floor, relishing in the small moans of pain and sensation escaping from Nicolas as all the things in his loins were jostled. He settled him on the little cot and covered him with a blanket, and kissed his open mouth. 

"I shall return in a week's time. See if you can bring yourself to ask the others to aid you," Armand said mockingly. "What would Arthur or Félix or François do if they saw, I wonder?" A soft laugh escaped him, and Nicolas closed his eyes in shame. He forced the violinist to open them once more, bringing his face close. "One week's respite, Nicolas. Then we will see if you still think to fight me and this natural order."

Armand left his room quietly, leaving Nicolas to doze or weep or ponder, and called for Franz Krulper. They were on their way in a coach before it had even turned four, and no one was the wiser for Nicki's absence. 

The following night Nicolas awoke to a soreness and a fullness, as if something heavy and ponderous weighted him down and bid him slow and stagger. He opened his eyes and nearly choked when he sat up, the balls and plug and coins jostling inside him, pressing against his prostate and uncomfortably against other areas. He thought he could see bulges in his abdomen, but he knew it was only his imagination. 

"That little shit," he said to himself, inspecting the accoutrements attached to his genitals. "If he thinks I can't survive without him, he's wrong." Nicolas rose from the cot, and grabbed the desk for support, shuddering and quaking on his legs as he became accustomed to the changing pieces inside him. This would not do. He could not go about like this. He could not even hunt with this perpetual distraction!

With gritted teeth he snatched black breeches from the armoire and white stockings, shoving them on haphazardly because he could hardly see past the trembling and the shaking as he choked and gasped against the sensations rolling through him. One of them slipped down and vaguely he thought he or someone could fix it later. He had to take a breath and tell himself that he could survive this, that he survived Les Innocents and he could damn well survive an immature and needy sexual sadist trying to turn him into his personal fuck toy. He shoved a shirt on and inspected himself in the mirror. He looked tired. There was something around his eyes that was brittle and he wondered how he could deceive the others. 

He stood shakily, and tried to take a few steps, almost collapsing at the feeling of the balls rolling gently inside him. Damn him! But he knew if he did not obey, the little demon would have something far worse for him. He straightened his back, trying to control the worst of the shaking, and inspected himself in the mirror. 

"Nicolas? Did you feed yesterday?" Félix asked through the door as he knocked and entered. 

"Of course I did!" Nicolas shouted at him, and put up his hands immediately in apology when Félix backed away, startled by the violent reaction. "Forgive me, I'm, I'm-"

"I only did what I thought was right for you," Félix replied coldly. "I accept that you cannot forgive me, but you need not endanger those who have devoted themselves to good and holy causes to make a point."

"It was just one priest! And a rector!" Nicolas protested in annoyance. They had had this argument already, and there were no winning sides to it. "You would have spit on their so-called faith in the Crusades!" He took a step, paled, and grabbed the back of his chair with trembling hands. 

"Nicki, are you, ah, not well tonight?" Félix asked awkwardly. 

"Are you not well tonight?" Nicolas mimicked with a petty voice, stinging Félix. "Do I look well? Did I look well when the lot of you stole me from my home?" He took a trembling step towards Félix, wild-eyes and shaking all over. "Did I look well when you dumped me in that cage and threatened me with fire? Did I look well when you whipped me raw? Did I look well, Félix? What do you think?! Get the fuck out of here you failed useless monk!" His voice had grown higher pitched with every step, and he was shaking unstoppably, his eyes blinking as if they were trying to focus on him through his tears. Félix backed away from him with every question, flinching at his words of anger and putting his hands up, though he was nearly a head taller. 

"I will fetch Eleni," he decided, after he reached out for Nicolas only to have the door slam in his face. 

Nicolas breathed hard, trembling as he leaned against the door and tried to get himself under control, sliding against it so he could collapse onto his knees. He hadn't meant that. He really hadn't, it was, it was just, how could they be so blind? How could they not see what Armand was? What Armand was doing to him? A part of him feared everything Armand said was true, and that part choked his voice dry when he thought of telling anyone, even Eleni, of the endless rape and torture. For now at least, until he could catch the little devil in a public act of depravity and show everyone how awful he actually was, he would have to deal with it himself.

He steadied himself, took a breath, and tried to walk back to his desk without falling to his knees and rubbing his cock against anything with leverage like some kind of rutting animal in heat. 

He couldn't get hard like this. And as tempted as he was to test the extent of Armand's reach, if the imp did know Nicki had disobeyed, he hated to see what punishment would look like, if this were pleasure. Besides, he'd have to put it all inside again. He didn't need Armand's command or his dare. He could show Armand how unaffected he was. Did the devil expect him to grovel and beg at his feet? Never again would he say "please."

Finally, he collapsed into his chair and groaned at the feeling of everything settling inside him. He was still unsatisfied and sensitive, and it left him feeling feverish and twitchy, everything grating across his sensitive nerves stretched out for relief. He tried to shift as little as possible, 

"Nicolas?" Eleni was knocking at the door. 

"Oh for Heaven's sake!" Nicolas cried out through the door. "Can you not leave me with a moment's peace? Why must you henpeck me so?"

"Nicolas, we care for you," Eleni said reproachfully through the door. "May I enter?"

"You're going to anyway," replied Nicolas sullenly. 

"Oh! You dressed yourself today!" Eleni said in surprise before she could stop herself. She was holding a sheaf of papers. 

"Yes, I am more than capable of that, ma’mselle," he snapped irritably, feeling strained and too full. Why wouldn't she leave him in peace? He had no need for privacy before and now it seemed as if he had only taken it for granted. Like so many things. His jealous love. But Lestat hadn't even apologized. He hadn't even explained. All he did was accuse and accuse and self-victimize. Well, Nicolas could do that too. He was more than happy to encourage Lestat to abandon him. To see if he'd be proved wrong. He hadn't expected his heart to break as much as it did when he wasn't. 

"You have your moments," Eleni said demurely. She placed the papers on the desk and bent down to pull his stockings up and button the bottom of his breeches properly. He shied away from her momentarily, and refused to meet her eye when she hesitated, then plunged ahead to make him look respectable. She slid his feet into black shoes they always kept polished. "I know you miss him. But that is no reason to take it out on Félix and the rest of us. He'll be back before you know it."

"You think I miss him? You think I need him?" Nicolas asked furiously. He wasn't sure who they were talking about, Lestat or Armand, but he wouldn't acknowledge that of anybody. "I don't need anyone! I came up with this, this theatre! I forced Lestat's hand in giving it to you! You'd all be scrambling in the dark, hiding from Armand if it wasn't for me!"

"Pettiness doesn't suit you," Eleni said with a moue of distaste. Nicolas had such an elegant and handsome face, so charming when it smiled. He looked unhinged now, bitter and petty, and unattractive in his misery. She could not deny he sometimes was a beautiful picture of melancholy in a dark mood, but when he was like this, no one wanted to be around him. 

"Then leave me to my pettiness. It seems to sell the tickets just fine," Nicolas spat. "Enough to pay for the shirts you insist I ruin and the hats Anna-Louise wears."

Silence. Eleni stared at his shoes, thinking they might need a polish. Anything but what she had just heard. 

"How?" She asked in a whisper, her mouth gone dry. "H-how do you know about--"

"I can smell her on you. And you're happy. I can see the memories on you. It's dangerous. He'll kill her. You shouldn't let Armand know you have a mortal you care about," Nicolas said begrudgingly. His expression cracked a little and his voice faltered. "You shouldn't let him know you care about anyone. Anything. He'll, he'll just take it away." He hugged himself suddenly, hands at his elbows, and turned his face away.

Touched, she sat down in the chair beside his desk and tapped the sheaf of papers she'd brought. Surely Nicolas was talking about Justine. Or Lestat? He blamed so many people for his troubles, and although he did not think himself free of fault, he celebrated it as if it were a game of comeuppance. When they were alone she would have these snippets of what he really thought, of how he really hurt, and what really mattered to him. And she could not imagine the same youth viciously screaming at François for fumbling a half-step turn or fussily quarreling with Laurent over fashion or immaturely cackling at Armand over a tiny foible. 

"Thank you, Nicki," she said softly. "Are you sure you don't want to move back into your old flat?"

"Maybe. That might be, better," Nicolas said. "But what about my, you know-" His fits. His uncontrollable rages. His strange impetuous moments of brash indiscretion. "Armand won't even let me leave without telling someone."

"He still thinks he is the coven master of old. I will talk to him."

"Coven master in all but name? You are all still terrified of him, of what he's willing to do," Nicolas said, finally turning to her with a strained smile. He seemed quieter, weary.

"But we don't need him, Nicki. It's you we need, and everyone knows that," she promised him. She slid the sheaf of papers to him, and he pulled them close with a sigh. Eleni and Laurent were dazzlingly quick learners, but some modernisms still confounded them. Nicolas was the only contemporary Parisian in the coven who could help choose the right course of action, and he knew what was best for the theatre besides. When he wanted to, he could call on what had made him the perfect little gentleman reading law at the Sorbonne. It was a greater part of himself than he would ever admit. 

"Do not worry about this one," Nicolas said, his Parisian accent crisp as he read. "They will send you another letter later to confirm, and do not expect a reply to this one." He gave her the single sheet of paper, and grinned suddenly at the next one, looking mischievous and handsome all at once. 

"So is it true?" Eleni asked excitedly. She had never won anything before. 

"My dearest Eleni," he said very kindly, suddenly every bit the sane aristocratic gentleman he had once been as a student. He took her hand gently in his and his voice was soft and she smiled, loving to see him like this, as himself. When he forgot to act brash and shocking and sarcastic, he would slip back into the impeccable breeding and manners he had been born into, even his posture changing and relaxing into something more respectable and upright. It was like when he sat up with Lestat's mother when she was sick, devoted as ever to her son and knowing he should be here for her, even when inside he made himself sick with jealous and grief and paranoia and betrayal. Had he and Lestat promised themselves to each other? There had been real love there. Genuine inseparable mortal love. 

She had spied on him, eyes bright with drink and feverish, thinned and exhausted with grief, sighing when he left for the night, genuinely concerned for her, looking up and down the street as if hoping to see Lestat walking up from the night. Or he would fall asleep in the chair, and Gabrielle would cover him in his red coat, one of the few maternal things Eleni had ever seen her do. They were both the abandoned of Lestat, after all. That had been Eleni's idea, to use the red coat. There was a mutual pain there in that coat. And he never drank in front of her, preferring to drown himself in a dangerous tavern somewhere, where even then you could tell from his bearing that he had good breeding, even if he could curse like a sailor when they tossed him out reeling, back straight and fist upraised like a gentleman about to demand a duel. He couldn't help it when he forgot himself. No wonder Lestat thought his earnestness and innocence so charming, his hard-won cynicism and sarcasm an exception. 

She did not know why he did this. Why would he warp himself from perfection? When he caught himself he would slump, stick his hands in his pockets, and let out a string of curses to make a street urchin blush, all the while checking for witnesses. But when they were alone he didn't mind her seeing him like this, kind and gentle, and she supposed he felt vulnerable in it. He patted the back of her hand, and she admired the glass-like nails on his fine fingers. 

"Yes, dear heart?" she asked fondly. His eyes could be enormous, and his smiles always gave his age away. He might be an immortal forever, but his smile would never turn past twenty. 

"This is a letter from a villainous fraud who is conducting a scheme to extort good men and women out of their money," Nicolas explained in a low voice. "The method of claiming the prize, if you'll study the needlessly contrived language at the bottom here, is designed to ensure he absconds with your money and you abscond with the debtor's prison guards."

Eleni gasped. "Who would target me? And at the theatre? They know this address! Nicolas, we must find him!"

"That will be unnecessary," Nicolas said with a chuckle, his eyes crinkling in amusement. It startled her to see how evanescent his moods were, how fleeting his scowls or smiles. But she was always glad to hear his amusement. He could express so much joy in the world if he only let others see it. "He most likely acquired your name and address from a list purchased elsewhere. The money he might recoup from cheating honest citizens is more than enough to cover the massive postal costs. These sorts of letters are a nuisance, nothing more, so long as we ignore them. Delve any deeper and your efforts will fall through paper as thin as their promises."

"Oh thank you, Nicolas," she murmured, grasping the letter and looking at it with annoyance and disappointment. 

"Also, would you trust a prize drawing you'd never entered, that spelled the King's name wrong?" He asked, unable to keep the laughter out of his voice. 

"Oh!" She let out a soft laugh at her folly, realizing the prize was in "looises."

"The first one's always a surprise," Nicolas said off-handedly. "Then you realize their letter-writing abilities might attest to their potential for making an honest living." He shuffled through a few papers of the same kind that looked to be tax documents, and set those aside. The last one appeared to be a legal inquiry. 

"Oh," Nicolas said. It was addressed to him. 

"What is it, Nicolas? I do not understand why you would be contacted like this if you are not in trouble with the Maréchaussée," Eleni said. 

"When did this letter arrive?" He asked her. 

"Last night," Eleni said. "But your door was shut and Armand said you weren't to be bothered. He didn't understand it either."

Nicolas let out a bark of laughter. "It would appear that M. Roget has applied for a restraining order against me." He tore up the paper quickly and scornfully, leaving the pieces on the desk. Eleni could not see why it mattered when the letter had arrived. "Well, if that is all," he said, sighing. "I'm going out. That is, if I am permitted? I think I will stay the day in the old flat. Just to try that lovely trunk you had made for me." He touched her chin gently with a smile, as if they really were cousins or brother and sister. 

"I will let Félix know. Can he just check on you before dawn comes? I just want to make sure you are home safely," she pleaded when he rolled his eyes. 

Nicolas relented, giving her a silent nod. 

"Thank you. Have a good evening, M'sieur," she said teasingly. 

"And you as well, Mademoiselle," he replied, about to stand up when he remembered all the fullness of Armand's remembrance inside him.

She paused in surprise, and then left when he rudely did not rise. Only when he was out of his mind did he ever fail to do so. Now it was starting to become difficult to tell the difference, and she tried to ignore it for as long as she could. Nicolas should not have known of Anna-Louise. Eleni bathed and changed her clothes before coming to the theatre. He could not have smelled her mortal lover as he claimed. It saddened her, for him to think he had to lie to be believed. But she supposed she could henpeck him less about his powers. She just didn't know how long she could delay teaching him how to control it before he went mad with the leaking thoughts of others. 

Nicolas covered his face, then looked back down at the scraps of paper. Armand would make something of this if he knew. Some punishment for his own pleasure. 

Gritting his teeth and clenching all his muscles, Nicolas rose, staggering to his armoire and grabbing a walking stick Laurent had purchased and ended up not liking. Nicki liked to use it to tap out time for the dancers and to threaten Félix and to demonstrate a fight scene. The support it offered was a little help, and if he put on a nicer coat, it might match for once. 

He barely made it outside. He felt feverish, all his senses on end and seeking out satisfaction as the weight inside him distracted his mind. He held on to the valise and the violin case tightly as he looked about, trying to call for a coach. A few people milled about, waiting between shows or about to attend one. They had no show tonight and the cast was known to be rather mysterious and aloof as part of their act.

"Halloa, de Lenfent! I hoped I would find you here!" Someone called, and Nicolas pretended he hadn't heard, turning to search for a passing coach. Damnit, someone must be taking a coach to a show!

"M. de Lenfent?" There was a tap on his shoulder and he whirled jerkily, choking on the feeling inside him of everything sloshing around and opening new wounds. For the first time he was grateful for the plug that stoppered any blood, but the pain must have shown on his face, because his arm was gripped tightly to stead him as he stumbled. "Mon Dieu, Nic, are you all right?"

Very few people called him Nic. He permitted it but rarely, and those who did seemed the only ones with that inclination anyway. His vision seemed to blur in pain and desire and simple feeling and he gradually focused on Robert de Deneau's serious sober expression. On his arm with a black bonnet and an equally serious expression was a sweet faced young woman, pale with very curly chocolate brown hair, a smallish mouth, and large brown eyes. Her nose was slightly pointed but not enough to make her look piggish, and her face was heart-shaped besides. 

"M-mademoiselle," he stammered in apology, bowing and not quite managing it. He had to grip his walking stick and Robert reached out to grab him under the shoulders and help him stay standing. 

"Please, M'sieur, there is no need to injure yourself on my account," she said earnestly. 

"Please allow me the pleasure of introducing my wife. Celeste de Mont Chatlain de Deneau," Robert said quickly but proudly. "Dear heart, this is my brother in arms in all but blood. Nicolas de Lenfent."

"The pleasure is all mine. I regret that you must see me in such an unseemly state, and that I had not the happy occasion to attend your wedding," Nicolas said. "When did the joyful party occur?"

"Didn't I tell you, Celeste? Always the perfect gentleman. One of the last men with honor, I always said. What that lunatic country lord--"

"The pleasure is mine to meet you, M de Lenfent," Celeste said, cutting her husband off quickly. "It has been but three happy months. If you are unwell, would you permit us to escort you home? We were on our way and Robert had a secret gift for calling cabs."

"Hey, hey, here's one, do you know how much that is? Good. Go fetch me a cab. A good one with a roof." Robert had called a boy playing nearby, grubby and snotty, but eager for another copper. He ran off. Moments later he returned clinging to the back of a well-appointed coach. He hopped off and held out his hand. 

"What do good Christian boys say?" de Deneau, self-proclaimed atheist, asked. 

"ThankYouPleaseMonsieurPeterMaryJosephAndAllTheSaintsBlessUsAndPreserveUsOhLord," the boy rushed out in one breath, and received another copper for his troubles. He touched where he thought a forelock was and ran back to show his prize to his fellows. 

"Well done," Nicolas muttered, now being supported by Celeste. She smelled amazing, the kind of spice that felt like home. He hadn't felt like home since Lestat. 

"I only learned it from you," Robert said, grinning. 

"I thought it was your trick!" Celeste gasped. 

"My trick that I learned from Nicolas de Lenfent," Robert answered with a grin. 

"Although, don't tell me you've found religion," Nicolas said doubtfully. He was feeling better now that he was steady and not moving. He smiled at Celeste, and Robert gave them a queer look, not one of jealousy but something Nicolas couldn't place. He had never seen it before on Deneau's face. 

"That was all for your benefit, my friend. Heaven forbid I offend your sensibilities by corrupting children and asking them to praise Nature for their providence and labors," Robert said, opening the door and holding out a hand for Celeste to climb in. 

"You are as rare as Robert claims, M. de Lenfent, to remain a good Catholic among friends such as these!" Celeste exclaimed. "My girlhood friends feared I would become a pagan within the week!"

"There are no good Catholics, Madame, just recovering ones," Nicolas quipped, but he shuddered and went pale as he moved towards the coach, and it took both Celeste and Robert to help him into it. Panting and exhausted, he lay back as much as he could on the opposite seat while Robert crowded in after giving the directions.

"I hope you will forgive me," Nicolas said. "As far as first impressions go-"

"They tell me you still strive to be witty and polite even when you can barely stand on your feet," Celeste replied, and they shared a surprised smile. 

Robert was looking at them with the same odd expression on his face, and Nicolas finally recognized it. Longing. But he was married to Celeste. Were they unhappy? Did they not share smiles? They seemed to dote on one another, and held hands even in the coach in his presence. 

He turned and closed his eyes, trying to still himself against the agonizing rocking of true coach. He put a hand over his mouth. He felt sick and would have moaned. Things were complicated enough without getting involved with mortal lives and mortal friends. 

Thinking she must be distracting him from his misery, Celeste asked, "So you believe in the Immortal Father, Our God?" Robert snorted and looked the other way. She shoved him playfully but kept her eyes on Nicolas. 

"We all have an immortal father even when we wish it were otherwise," Nicolas said softly, and looked over at Celeste. "But yes. I believe in The Lord Our Father."

"Why?" Celeste asked in a small voice, and Robert squeezed her hand. 

"Because it is unbearable to think there is no justice after all. That the world is just as it is, even if that God were uncaring, even if there is no ultimate purpose. I cannot find meaning in it purely from the study of science and nature and, well," Nicolas said, hesitating. There had been warmth. There had been light and love. "I think I just know. It is a matter of faith, non? That is all it is for anyone."

The coach fell quiet, and Nicolas looked back up at the roof, embarrassed to have been so earnest to a stranger when she most likely expected merely small talk. 

But then a hot little mortal hand grasped his and smoothed the frown from his forehead. He found himself relaxing, and thought his mother might have touched him this way. She had the same brown hair, the same dark curls Nicolas inherited.

"He's ice cold."

"And delirious. He just called you Maman," Robert said doubtfully. 

"Should we call for a physic?" She asked. 

Nicolas mumbled something, and sat bolt upright, startling her and causing him to groan out loud, gripping the bench, his back arching. 

The coach rolled to a stop. "No problems in there, young M'sieur?" 

"No," Nicolas gasped, shaking his head fervently and sitting up, his hand on Celeste's arm nearly crushing. Robert scrambled out of the coach to catch and lift him, and he barely stifled the moan. 

"He needs rest," Robert said to the coachman, and tossed him a coin. "And discretion."

The coachman touched the brim of his tricorner, then jumped down to help Celeste down from the coach. 

"You'll want to watch your brother, Madame," the man confided in her, trying to be kind. "Many passengers come through my coach, even fine ladies and gentleman, in all manner of human condition. Your brother is not worse for drink."

"Oh, he's not my brother, M'sieur, just a dear old friend," Celeste said with a blush. "But your kindness does you credit. Good night."

Robert supported a haggard-looking Nicolas under one arm. He looked rather younger than Robert, more her age, and she realized that they could be mistaken for twins. 

"It's no trouble, Nic," Robert was saying, as he took the keys from his friend and unlocked the door. She saw him wind an arm around his waist, and her husband glanced back at her with a smile. "Could I trouble you to help me light some candles, my heart?"

Nicolas stumbled on the first landing, but eventually they made it to the bedroom, where the trembling youth finally collapsed with a sigh. He had not counted on this. He didn't think it would be so hard! And Armand would be gone for a week! He would have to direct rehearsals! Performances did not usually occur without the coven master present. 

"Where can we fetch water from?" Celeste asked softly, holding a candelabra and looking about. 

"Just rest," Robert told his friend, brushing the hair back from his pale face. Celeste watched as he grasped Nicolas' hand and lingered, stroking the back of it with his thumb. "You're ice cold." He gathered the blankets around him. "We'll find some soup or drink. Something to warm you up."

"No, it's, it's fine. You've both been so kind," Nicolas said, and his voice was surprisingly clear. He seemed to have settled once he lay down, but he had closed his eyes and still seemed distracted, feverish. 

"Someone should stay with you," Robert said, meeting Celeste's eyes. She nodded in agreement. 

"No! That, that won't be necessary," Nicolas said, gripping Robert by the arm and trying not to startle him. "Someone from the theatre will be coming by to check on me." Now that he was settled and in his bedroom with these two mortals he could smell and strain for the blood teeming inside them. He hadn't fed yet and the noise was pounding in his head. 

"I can stay with you until he comes," Robert said. "I will send Celeste home and then return."

"I would like to remain here, Robert. I know how to take care of the ill," Celeste said slowly. 

"That's true. Celeste does charitable works at the hospital, did you know?" Robert asked Nicolas with pride. "She assists the physics there."

"How modern," Nicolas said weakly. There was so much noise. The coaches on the streets clattering and groaning outside against the wood and the cobbles. The quick and excited heartbeat of the friend beside him and the calm and steady heartbeat of the woman who could be his twin. And the ever-present susurration of whispers and music and words and snatches of laughter and smells and time around him, all crowding in to ask for his attention. He hadn't realized he had closed his eyes until Robert placed his hand on his shoulder as a measure of comfort. 

"You should let him rest," Celeste was whispering, and he could feel them leaving the room, going into the parlor where his books were. 

"He has absolutely no food or wine. Barely any water for a toilette," he could hear Celeste musing. 

"He lives more at the theatre, I think. He has a dressing room there he used to share with his, his friend," Robert told her as they walked around the flat looking for some things they thought a mortal invalid might need.

"A man like him at a theatre? I would not have guessed had I not spoken with him tonight."

"How do you mean? Look, nothing more than a single bottle of wine. I've seen it there before."

"He's so earnest. And young, as if he believed everything he says he doesn't even if it hurts him," Celeste mused. "He has a cleaning lady. Perhaps he had someone for meals. His allowance must be substantial."

"His father's a wealthy draper, but they disowned him when he became a violinist, and he moved into this flat after that, besides. No patron, either," Robert said. "And he's always been like that. The most cynical and cutting sarcasm among us. But he says the queerest things."

"Is it queer to love God and Man? To have faith?"

"It is mad to do so when you have decided nothing will prove you right," Robert replied. "He always seemed bent on destroying himself. I was with him the night we heard the violin solos. The look on his face was as if he'd been struck to his very soul and his world turned upside down. As if everything he believed was no longer true."

"He would have made a good priest. But never a lawyer, I think," Celeste replied. Cabinets were opened and closed. "Someone like that is too pure of heart, too innocent. It would have poisoned him from the inside."

"He poisoned himself when his friend from the provinces, that good-looking country lord, abandoned him," Robert said. "He took to killing himself with drink. It was ugly." He sighed. 

"The death of hope always is," Celeste replied. 

"I'm sorry, my sweetling, I did not mean-"

"My father got what he deserved," Celeste replied. Her voice was hard for her young years and Nicolas heard the humiliation in her face and the anguish of her mother's tears as they watched her father rave. "No more and no less suffering than what was visited upon him and us."

"You marvel me with your fortitude sometimes. It inspires me ever more," Robert said. "This revolution shall be one of equality for the fairer sex as well."

"Do I inspire your love the same way he does?" she asked. 

"What do you mean? De Lenfent is an old friend-"

"Please do not lie to me. You are my best friend, and we know each other well. You are in love with him, Robert," Celeste said pleadingly. "Ours is a beautiful companionship but I can read how you truly feel, so please do not insult me with such a lie."

"I-I cannot," Robert said with a faltering voice. "I have not the strength to confess to such a shame, and least of all to the woman I owe my allegiance, my love, my physical and spiritual devotion."

"Sometimes I think you lie about your atheism as well," Celeste replied coldly. 

"Do you expect me to confess it to him? Liberte does not mean freedom of this unnatural kind!"

"I think he of all people would not judge you for it, just as I do not judge you for it," Celeste replied. "There is enough turmoil in these times without your cross of impossible passions, my love."

"Forgive me. You are the wisest and most compassionate soul I have ever met. I am fortunate you are clothed in the body of a daughter of Eve so that I might have the privilege of crudely naming you my wife," Robert said. 

"Oh, get up from the floor, Robert, unless you are planning to propose to De Lenfent!" she giggled.

"I knew I shouldn't have brought you out of doors tonight. It would only reveal more of my own foolishness," Robert replied, but there was a warmth in his voice. 

"What are you doing in here?" A tall well-built blond man, lanky but clearly a soldier, stood in the doorway dressed in a sober grey frock coat and white and black. He wore no lace but a simple linen cravat. "This is the flat of Nicolas de Lenfent. You do not belong in here."

"We are his friends," Robert stood quickly, standing in front of Celeste. "He took ill outside the theatre and we escorted him home. We are surprised to see you here sir, as you are to see us."

"As his, bodyguard and valet, I must be forgiven for my watchfulness. My name is Félix de Rondeaux. Mademoiselle Eleni du Louvois sent me to check on him," Félix replied with a bow. 

"Ah, she is his dancer cousin at the theatre. How good of her. I am Robert de Deneau, an old friend of his from la Sorbonne, and this is my wife, Celeste de Mont Chatlain de Deneau."

"Enchante, Madame. Can I call a coach for you?" Félix answered. "I am sure Nicolas would not want to oblige your wife out of her household so late at night, and you have done him a great kindness."

"I would like to stay with him," Celeste replied. "I am a nurse at the army hospital and I can have my housekeeper come assist me."

"I would not want to tire you, Madame, though your generosity and kindness are rare in these times," Félix replied. "I will ask Nicolas what he would like."

"He's sleeping-" Robert began, but Félix had already gone into the bedroom. 

"Nicki? What is the matter?" Félix whispered. For mortals to have to bring him home, Nicolas must either be playing a trick, or truly ill. The fledgling was ice cold and he opened his eyes, pupils dilated and whites bloodshot, and seemed not to recognize Félix for a moment. 

"Wh-" He began. "Eleni sent you?" Félix nodded. "Are Robert and Celeste still here?" Another nod. Nicolas did not sound well, strained and weak and just a little frantic. "Free tickets to the theatre. And then help me to the trunk?"

"Trunk?" Félix asked, brow furrowed, but scrambled to his feet as Nicolas' eyes drooped. The sun would be rising in a few hours and Nicolas was but a fledgling, Magnus' blood notwithstanding. The mortals could under no circumstances be there when he fell into the death sleep. 

"He bids you thanks, and to come anytime. He must convalesce now, and I am tasked with caring for him as well," Félix said, drawing two tickets from his coat and pressing them upon Robert after the customary protests. "I am happy to call a coach. He has fallen asleep, but perhaps you will see him at the next show?"

"He is good to have such a responsible man to watch over him," Robert de Deneau replied. "Come, Celeste."

When they were successfully herded away, Félix picked up Nicolas gently, flinching as he convulsed for no reason, and deposited him in the trunk he found as the sole occupant of the closet. It was late enough that he ought not risk heading back to the theatre, and he locked the door, putting a chair in front of it, and sat down outside of the closed trunk that held his sleeping friend. Nicolas looked peaceful and worn out inside the box, and Félix wondered just what was wrong with him. If he was ill, why hadn't he attacked the mortals? Did he care for some, though he claimed all were ripe for their vampiric harvest? He reminded himself to tell Eleni of these mortals who seemed to know her as Nicki's cousin, and let the sunlight draw sleep over his eyes. 

The next evening, Nicolas was no better. Felix carried him to the theatre wrapped in a blanket, much to Eleni’s alarm, and they watched him sleep, trembling every so often, on his little cot.

“What is the matter with him?” Eleni whispered. “He seemed out of sorts last night but he was not this ill.”

“I found two mortals in his flat. Robert de Deneau and his wife Celeste,” Felix reported softly. “He was sick enough on the streets that they put him to bed and were about to stay with him through the morning.”

“Thank heavens you were there!” Eleni cried, covering her mouth.

“Nicolas seems to think fondly of them. He had me give them free tickets rather than simply kill them,” Felix added. “They knew your name.”

“Deneau went to school with Nicolas,” Eleni mused. “Do you think we should wake him?”

“We need to start rehearsals. The premier of the next play is the night of Armand’s return.”

“I don’t think he can stand, much less rehearse!”

“Let’s see. Look.”

Nicolas’ eyes drifted open, and he saw the polished cherry wood of his writing desk. He blinked, confused. He and Lestat had been riding in the woods. They were on his father’s horses and they were going to find a clearing to picnic. Nicolas was on his own horse, his favorite chestnut mare, and he was leading the way. But somehow Lestat suddenly burst ahead, and Nicolas was falling farther and farther behind. The thudding of the hooves felt loud in his head and he called out for Lestat to wait, and thought it a race, so he laughed, and shook the reins to urge his horse onwards. But his horse suddenly bucked, tossing him onto the ground. He blinked, shook his head, blood raining in droplets on his face from where he struck a tree trunk, and in the distance he could hear the scream of a horse, the slavering sounds of fangs and saliva.

And he knew. Lestat had turned into a wolf and he was coming for Nicolas. He was coming and he would turn Nicolas into a werewolf and they would run through the village and kill everyone, turning whoever they chose. They’d turn Etienne and Lestat’s mother and the four of them would be a pack, running wild through the countryside. Nicolas would personally chomp down on Lestat’s father, worrying his face between his jaws until his skull crunched beneath his fangs. So Nicolas panted and felt the blood running down his face and opened his arms, and Lestat was a golden wolf who pounced on him, and there was so much pain and shaking and flesh tearing and he hadn’t realized, he hadn’t understood at all, oh, Lestat, he didn’t know, he didn’t know, why hadn’t he told Nicolas? But it was over, it was over and Nicolas loved Lestat so much that he smiled and watched as Lestat dragged his entrails out of his ribcage and scarfed them down, and licked at Nicolas’ face with bloody tongue and Nicolas smiled and smiled and smiled and kissed his nose serenely as he bled out in the antiseptic snow against a dead sky, his mare fallen on the ground, long rotted away over the centuries because it had taken so long for Lestat to kill Nicolas slowly, chewing away at his heart and his guts. Nicolas could smell the heady wolf musk and he felt the blood slippery and steaming beneath his fingers and he lay back and sighed and suddenly realized he should feel afraid of all this pain and violence from Lestat, who had betrayed him, who had abandoned him, who was killing him from within, and he screamed as Lestat tore out his throat and his scream gurgled in his throat and rang out in the forest and he felt himself shoot up to the sky where he burned away slowly, his soul unworthy before the heavens.

And he opened his eyes to the cherry wood of the desk, and he felt like crying. He hated dreams about Lestat. How long would he wait before his former lover would return? How long before they could speak again and mend all their misunderstandings?

He turned onto his back and froze, feeling the baubles inside him rotate and shift. With a groan he wedged himself sitting and realized Eleni and Felix were staring at him.

“Good evening,” he hazarded slowly and cautiously, not sure why they were here.

“Are you well?” Eleni asked, and Nicolas stared back at her with hollow eyes and hollow comprehension.

“I'm just thirsty," he said, relieved his voice was steady, even if he said it flat and without any evidence he was truly present. 

With great effort he stumbled to his feet, gritting his teeth and trying to ward off Felix's attempts to help. 

"I'm going out," he said, nearly panting, and he felt himself go far away inside as he put one step before the other mechanically, his brain and nerves twitching as every little movement set off agonizing streams of electricity across his person. He stumbled into a side alley just a block from the theatre, looking like a wealthy youth worse for drink as he was shoved up against a brick wall by a thief and his pockets felt. The mortal grazed his abdomen, shoving the contents painfully, and Nicolas choked, awakening as he grasped the suddenly struggling mortal and haphazardly drank from his neck. He needed every drop he could get, and when the thief's body dropped to the floor he felt sufficiently sedated to return to the theatre and the conductor's stand.

But the world kept rotating in and out of his focus. Pitching in all directions. He thought he could see insects skittering across the music stands and black shadows lurking and stretching across the stage, grasping at the dancers' ankles and just missing at the last moment, shy of the light. He blinked, trying to get the headache to go away, but it only throbbed in time with the music, and he gritted his teeth as he tried to direct. 

"STOP! Stop, stop, stop!" he bellowed, chest heaving with effort. "What the hell was that?" He gesticulated wildly at Benoit Duflagny, only to have Pascal Renarque, sitting behind him, look affronted. 

"Sir, you must explain yourself. I see nothing wrong with-" he began stiffly, but Nicolas cut him off with a wave of his hand like an axe. 

"Not you, M. Duflagny, who apparently thinks wailing is the new avant-garde!" he muttered, narrowing his eyes at the French horn player. A low murmur spread through the assembled players, and François Abbayé gave a snort of derisive amusement. 

"Something amuses you?" Nicolas asked, voice deadly quiet. His hands were trembling fists, blood sweat beading down his face with the effort of remaining standing. 

Delphine, his favorite violinist, spoke up. "Maestro, M'sieur, beg pardon, but, M. Duflagny is not present tonight. So we are bemused, sir, at the lesson you intend with his rebuke."

"She means, Lenfent, that you're hallucinating again!" François laughed, thin and sharp. A low chorus of giggles went up among the actors and Nicolas flung his baton at them. It struck the stage, shuddering where it had stuck into the floorboards like an arrow. Everyone fell silent. 

"Throwing things now, that's no way to behave, young man," François tutted in a parody of fatherliness. 

"The fuck happened to you?" Nicolas asked, pain in his voice, still unable to accept the change the Blood had wrought upon his friend. 

"I stopped indulging you, child," François said, plucking the baton out of the wood and twanging it against his hand. "You're good for writing, that's all. No point in wasting our time trying to train people who aren't even there." He cracked it in two and tossed the splintered pieces at Nicki's feet.

The violinist would have flushed red had he been able, but the dark shadow closing in every so often and blending out into the shadows struck him with a nameless dread, and without another word he walked past them all, shuddering as he passed Benoit's now empty chair, and then walked into the small mirrored room that was their dance studio. Eleni was already there, elegant body gracefully held in a stretch. She looked up at him curiously. Sometimes he took refuge in here, her dominion where she would permit no one to bother him, and sit in the corner to watch her dance or practice or teach. Even Armand respected this safe haven when he invaded every other part of Nicolas. 

The shadows stretched through the door and Nicolas made an un identifiable sound in the back of his throat, trying to stop himself from running to Eleni. There was too much noise and laughter and the things he saw, was she even really there? She made everything quieter. She always did no matter what. 

She must have seen distress upon his face because her arms were open as she caught him mid-stumble. 

"What's he doing?" one of the dancers whispered, watching their conductor collapse into thin air. 

"Get Mademoiselle du Louvois. Quickly," said the senior-most dancer. 

Nicolas was fumbling with something in mid air and pawing at his hair, but he shook his head, no, nothing was wrong, he just wanted Eleni's comfort. What could she do to help him from his predicament anyway? Have Armand return sooner? Nicolas felt pinned in three dimensions in the most intimate of places, and nothing was helping beyond his sheer stubbornness. 

He neither longed for nor dreaded Armand's return. His desires were no longer his own. This revelation struck him as a strange freedom, where any impulse could be indulged so that at least it would not stem from Armand. 

"Just hold me, please," Nicolas whispered, the two of them alone in the dance studio when in reality three vampires crowded together on the far wall to watch him talk to thin air. 

"I'm always holding you," Eleni said in a strange voice, and he looked up and her mouth was full of fangs and he screamed, trying to back away. She grappled for his face, and all the accoutrements within him made him gasp and stumble and tremble with every backwards slide. 

"Eleni, what are you doing?! What have I done?" Nicolas asked.

"Whore," Eleni hissed, scratching his face and his neck. "Harlot. Harem boy. Prostitute." She grabbed a wrist and ran a long pink tongue along his arm, and he shuddered, closing his eyes, and suddenly stronger hands were holding him and he bucked and screamed wildly, because the wolf was back and he'd be bitten, oh please, it was him, why, couldn't he recognize his Nicki?

"Shh, shh, Nicki, it's all right, you're safe," Félix murmured, trying get his arms around the struggling fledgling. His eyes were wide open and his hair had escaped its tie. He saw nothing as he pushed and shoved and screamed, rivulets of blood running down his face and neck from where he scratched himself. He finally clamped Nicolas' arms to his side and hugged him fiercely to his chest, trying to wait out the trembling and the sobbing. He had heard the screams from the other side of the theatre and come running. No one but Nicolas ever screamed.

"It's me, it's me, I'm me," Nicolas was sobbing, his head down as if it hurt, trying still to fitfully twitch out of Felix's grasp. He began screaming again and Félix only held him tighter. 

"Oh Nicolas," Eleni said pityingly from where she appeared in the doorway. Nicolas gasped and shied away from her, shaking his head. 

"No I'm not, I'm not, you must believe me!" He cried desperately. 

"But you are our beloved Nicolas," Eleni replied, stroking his hair and his face with her cool smooth hands. He shuddered, which he had never done before from her touch. 

"We saw him talking to thin air. Then he started struggling with nothing and scratching himself," one of her dancers reported. 

"He's been hallucinating again," Félix said gravely. 

"But Armand is gone. What could be causing him such stress?" Eleni pondered. 

Nicolas had gone limp, exhausted and worn out, and his head hung, eyes closed, as he listened to the others talk about him. 

"Let us set him in his coffin. We can ask the orchestra what happened," Felix decided, rising with Nicolas in his arms. The violinist groaned as he was deposited gently in his coffin, but he was breathing shallowly with a thin film of blood sweat on his forehead, and when they closed the coffin lid over his young handsome face it was in repose. 

The next few nights got them no closer to the source of Nicki's consternation. His behavior grew increasingly erratic. He began to accost mortal strangers in the streets and ask them about dark shadows and things unseen, prompting a few slaps in the face but no reports to the Marechaussee. The way he stumbled and wove unsteadily through the crowded streets was enough to convince anyone he must be drunk. He continued to berate musicians who were not there but who apparently made barnyard animal noises. This made him unfit to direct rehearsal, but Delphine took over by right as first violinist, and they made do. 

This left him with even more time to wander the streets or stay in his room, brooding as he read from his many stacks of books Félix had brought over from his flat. When he fed he seemed to lunge for his kills with a strange ferocity and desperation they had never seen before. Félix had to look away from the sight of Nicolas embracing a mortal, lithe toned body twisting up against his victim like an intimate dance or act of lovemaking, as if they writhed together, hips undulating as blood passed from one to another. 

Nicolas was beautiful and a finely made human, with delicate but sensible features, boyish in a way that made him look younger than he was, and which constantly led him to be underestimated, with mixed results. He did not seem aware of his own handsomeness, and Félix considered it unseemly to be enamored with or attracted to his charge, though it was simple fact that all vampires were usually beautiful beyond mortal ken. Still, he kept his distance away from tempting thoughts and watched as Nicolas slowly slid to the ground. Now that they knew taking the Death into him did not harm him, they permitted and even encouraged it. It seemed to be the only thing that could bring peace when his mind was in such misalignment, and it made him easier to carry home besides, lolling limply in Felix's arms. He liked to have someone needing him, someone to take care of. 

Normally Nicolas professed to need no one and he acted the part of the self-possessed gentleman so well it only made the cracks in his mental state all the more obvious to anyone who met him. Only the most foolish urchins ventured near him to run an errand for him. Even the psychopathic bullies and the daring little rogues avoided him. 

So Félix liked to feel the violinist limp in his arms, cradled against his chest, or arms flung up in need. Since the incident with the whipping, Nicolas had withdrawn towards Eleni, but Félix himself did not trust the quiver that passed through him at the memory of Nicolas bathed in blood at his feet, blindly crying out his name for help. Nicolas the mortal had tasted so sweet, so innocent and naive despite all his sharp and clever sarcasm. Just an errant drop of blood against his face during Armand's punishment had told him Nicolas the vampire would be no less delightful. 

Nicolas came to as Félix was about to close his coffin lid. 

"Félix. What. What day is it?" He murmured sleepily, still mercifully anaesthetized by the Death. 

"Tomorrow is Thursday. Armand returns the following night for the premiere. How are you feeling?" Félix replied solicitously. 

Nicolas have a hollow laugh. 

"Like every nerve is hot and overwrought. Like, like I shall never sleep again," Nicolas replied, looking into the distance. "Only Thursday. Did Armand send word of when he would return? Just in time for the show or before?"

"He did not say," Félix replied, and was relieved to see Nicolas nod and close his eyes. 

But Armand and Franz returned early from Vienna the following evening. Nicolas was twitching fitfully on the bench of the harpsichord as he listened to the rehearsal for tomorrow night's premiere. Every so often his eyes seemed to unfocus, his lips going slack, before some new strand of melody tugged on his attention and he jerked alert. His eyes were bright and feverish and his back was a straight line of tension. 

"A little more to the left, Mlle Cisefoix," Armand called as he walked in from backstage, looking compact and unassuming in black. 

Their second dancer nodded, but Nicolas had frozen, no longer directing the orchestra. His eyes followed Armand as he walked down towards the pit. Armand was back early. Armand could release him from this agony. He would see Nicolas had been obedient and he would finish the lesson. It was a lesson in restraint, wasn't it? In resting and balancing work and and and time with Armand. Those were the major divisions of his existence now, were they not?

"Please do not stop on my account, M'sieur," Armand said politely as always. But Nicolas could remember those eyes glaring at him in wet glassy rage, the lips twisted in pain and fury, the clothing disheveled or worse, discarded. Armand stopped beside him to look over the score. "Impressive."

"Since when did you actually direct anything?" Nicolas asked scornfully, but inside he begged and begged for release, for freedom, for an end to the lesson, an end to the agony, a companion to whom he could impart the secret of this week's torture. Finally, someone who knew. Never mind this was the very person inflicting it. His body was betraying him, shoving thoughts out of his brain as he ran his eyes over his coven master hungrily. He wanted to do the work. That was all. He wanted Lestat back and the work back and he wanted the contentment he had known. He wanted to be able to be happy. He didn't even know if he wanted to be happy, but to be able to want to be was enough. 

"Shut up shut up!" Nicolas hissed at himself, closing his eyes and ducking his head. It drew concerned looks from the performers, and Armand nodded to Delphine to take over. 

"If I could see you in my office, Maestro," Armand commanded, his Italian perfect albeit with a Venetian accent. Nicolas gave a snort of derision, but getting up from the bench caused him difficulty, and he gasped short breaths to himself as he stood, feeling the ponderous weight resettle inside him. "The early morning dress rehearsal is today and Félix will be opening the doors in an hour's time. I would not wish for you to be discomfited."

"Only if you are," Nicolas replied. That he had no clever answer spoke to the manner of his distress. His world seemed to vibrate as he followed Armand down the halls, every movement jostling his being, gliding over that secret bundle of nerves that made his world flash white and quiet and his cock strain for contact. It was painfully hard and had been for four days, and though he had hidden it with a codpiece and a great deal of lying down, he could do nothing for the agony. His nerves were frayed and he could barely muster a coherent thought. 

He was shaking all over by the time Armand closed the door of his office and locked it, and he reached out for the coven master's arm, only to be rebuffed with a mere gesture of a lily white hand. 

"Stand over there," Armand said, motioning to an ottoman. He made a clicking noise, pointing, but Nicolas scowled despite himself, resentful of Armand's persistent efforts to train him like a dog. 

He walked over as dignified as he could when his entire being quivered and small whimpers of agony escaped him now that he no longer had to hide. Armand kicked him over with the sole of his shoe, forcing him onto his stomach over the ottoman and drawing a pained gasp from the violinist as the contents of his gut jerked and pressed against his walls, shoving into his consciousness to obscure everything else. 

"What is it you want?" he cried out before taking shuddering gasps. The pressure felt enormous and he told himself to focus on the words, like a drunkard taking care not to lose the thread of a dead conversation. A moan escaped him, then a stifled sob. The week had done its work, softened him and made him ripe for Armand's attentions. 

"I want you to understand that you belong to me. Everything you are and have and can create is mine to deal with and command and take as I see fit," Armand said. "Because, as you said, none of it is possible without me. Nothing but the silence and the noise. Do you deny it?"

Nicolas squeezed his eyes shut in frustration, and then cried out when Armand shoved his heel against his back, pressing down again. "No! I do not deny it!"

"Did you miss me?" Armand whispered, suddenly crouched and facing Nicolas, admiring his lips and cheeks, red with blood tears and distress. God, he wanted to give in. It had been agony and he had wanted to rest and Armand was showing him the door and Nicolas didn't even have to walk through; Armand would gladly push him. 

Nicolas only returned his gaze with a hateful glare. "I hate you." His face was whipped aside by the force of Armand's slap, but even then his body craved the touch. What was happening to him? "I do! I hate you! You are a hateful little creature! A monster!"

"If you are trying to provoke me to touch you and give you any relief, you're failing," Armand told him dryly. Nicolas gave a roar of frustration and tried to rise to dive for Armand. He got no farther than pushing himself upwards before Armand whacked him hard across the shoulders and arms with his silver-tipped walking cane, making him collapse again painfully on the ottoman. He went limp for a moment from the swimming nausea and borderline pleasure the pain brought him, his knees on the floor, his cheek and mouth open against the leather and his hands limp against the stone floor. The week of strain and stress had weakened him in body and mind, and he trembled, trying to muster the strength and presence of mind to attack once more, to have a fight like they used to, before Armand decided he wanted to see what Nicolas looked like naked. 

"Undress. Slowly. Let me see," Armand commanded, taking a seat on the green leather couch. 

Nicolas hesitated, and when Armand raised the stick again, he scrambled to take his shirt off, shivering at the cold air. Hesitantly, with minuscule winces, he eased off his breeches and stockings until he stood naked before the coven master. Armand's gaze swept him up and down at his leisure, as Nicolas stood with downcast eyes, trying to resist the urge to cover himself, especially the leather straps that bound his purplish red cock, so many nights in agony. 

"You have suffered, haven't you?" Armand asked. "Bend over and let me see my handiwork."

Nicolas hesitated again, uncertain as to what he meant, but he eyed the stick, then turned his back on Armand against every instinct he had. He bent just slightly, and stifled a groan as the weights shifted inside, making his knees weak and his legs quiver. 

"Open yourself."

"W-what?"

"Take those fine fingers on either side of that fine golden instrument and stretch yourself wide. Let me see."

"I-"

"Do this without question and this will all be over soon." As if to prove a point, Armand nudged Nicolas' legs apart with the walking stick and prodded his swollen, suffering cock, making him stumble and choke. "Do it."

Shaking, unable to think beyond the throbbing of his lower parts, Nicolas reached back with his fingers. He felt exposed, humiliated, as was surely Armand's intent, as he took the sides of his anus and stretched the opening to his hole, struggling to take shuddering breaths as he did so. It burned and burned and he felt pinned in midair and impossibly strained. 

"You have been good," Armand confirmed, and without warning he snatched the golden dildo out, unsnapping it from the leather harness that still trapped Nicki's cock. The swift motion of the metal out of him tugged at his skin and Nicolas cried out, knees buckling. Armand caught him around his middle, making him thrash and sob quietly from the pain and the sensations blowing out his thoughts. So empty, so loose. His hole puckered and ached for the missing dildo and he felt dizzy and uncertain of himself, of anything. 

"Shh, shh, here," Armand said, prodding at Nicki's blood-wet cheeks with the dildo and shoving it into his open, crying mouth, making him gag and choke. He slapped his buttock once, making him tense even as his puckered muscles clenched for the missing intrusion that they had held in place for a week. Armand released Nicolas, letting him collapse gently on the ottoman, knees folded against his chest but his buttocks resting above his heels. Nicolas sucked on the dildo, grateful for something to prevent him from screaming. He could get through this. Armand would take them all out somehow--

"Now," Armand said, setting a wooden bowl down on the floor. "Show me how you have longed for all this to be gone. How you have suffered. Void yourself of all these precious metals."

Nicolas made a sound of frantic protest. He felt strangely empty already without the two-inch thick metal cock inside him. How was he to reach back and remove all those balls and coins?

"Push out and bear down. I know you can do it. You've tried so hard not to squirm these few nights, but now you may do as you wish to quit yourself of this ordeal." Armand sounded so calm. Couldn't he just cut himself open and scoop out everything Armand wanted instead? He didn't need it. He just needed the music that would drown out the noise and the voices and the silence. Armand could have everything else. 

"I'm waiting. I know you are capable of this. You're prideful enough."

Couldn't Armand do it? He had longed for this moment, to be quit of all these torturous instruments, but when the time came he was afraid for what would come after and what Armand would think. Couldn't Armand just save him?

He felt the hard rap of the stick against his buttocks, and he closed his eyes, feeling ashamed as he tried to squeeze out the first coin. He did not want Lestat to return and see this or know this. It made him relieved it was just Armand there, watching, knowing his most intimate actions. He thought he might have fainted, his teeth clenched against the metal as he finally heard the confirmation of the coin dropping into the bowl. His breath heaved and he felt sick. 

Armand came around and finally, finally touched him, stroking his cheek and his tears, and taking the dildo out gently so Nicolas could suck on his fingers instead, never mind that he did not understand why, but this was precious comfort when he felt so humiliated and ashamed and alone, pushing foreign objects out of his arse. He was allowed this, he told himself. Who could blame him after nights of nothing but agony and pain? Armand was a centuries-old teacher of the young, and he knew exactly how to play the young fledgling before him. His bruises had faded but he still flinched whenever someone raised a hand. He did not want to think what it meant when he leaned towards Armand when he touched Nicolas below his waist or when he hurt Nicolas. Sometimes it simply hurt to think. It was easier to lose himself without being aware of it too, arguing and castigating himself for it. 

He kissed the fingertips and felt a second coin escape, and sighed in relief when Armand unlaced his own breeches, shoving into his mouth without comment or preparation, nothing more than a sigh of approval when Nicolas took him deep into his throat with the barest hitch of breath, licking him the way he knew Armand liked. 

"Look at me," Armand commanded, and Nicolas opened his eyes and his mind drained away, focusing on the incense honeyed taste of Armand and those brown eyes and that russet hair so intense and formidable inside that shell of youth. Armand's dead burned leaf brown eyes seared the world away, until there was just the commands from that mouth and the sensations flooding his body. No thoughts. No sarcasm. It was almost a relief. Just pure feeling and obedience. He blinked, the world flashing back in all its shame and agony. 

"Continue," Armand said, and Nicolas' brows knitted together with effort. Please forgive me, he thought. Please forgive me. I can't do everything at once. The feeling, the pressure, and my mouth, I can't, not at the same time. Armand seemed to sense his distress, because he finally moved his hips, thrusting in and out of Nicki's slack mouth and deep into his throat, choking him with every thrust with a loud gurgle of air and blood spit. Another coin dropped and Nicolas' eyes were rolling back in his head, eyelids fluttering as a series of coins dropped. His hands were still holding himself open and they seemed locked in place, for he was unable to command his own actions or limbs or thoughts beyond those commands Armand helpfully provided. His mind finally blanked again, his body shaking and quivering, his arms shaking with effort as he expelled another coin, then another, and he felt the air come back into his life and his arms suddenly relieved of their burden as Armand withdrew and abruptly rolled him onto his back. His cock was stiff and straining in the air, twitching with each coin that brushed over his prostate in its way out, making him writhe as they scraped it raw, and he cried out when Armand blew on his cock. He felt empty, so empty, when all week he had been stuffed full of Armand's attention and the weight of that function. Now all the coins were gone and the balls were left and rolling around in him, there was so much space left behind, and he felt cold and empty and alone. 

But then blistering painful warmth wrapped around his imprisoned cock, and his world darkened as Armand bent over him, shoving his cock in Nicki's pliant mouth once more as his own lips licked and tormented Nicki's stifled cock, begging for release. Nicolas writhed, only to be punished with a sharp smack on the hips. He choked on another hard thrust from Armand, and screamed against the engorged flesh in his mouth as something long and slender and cold sank into him. It was not enough to fill the emptiness, no, and it was hard and it stirred up the remaining balls and blood inside him, making him cry out and struggle helplessly, convulsing as it shoved roughly over his prostate time and again, making his back arch as he tried to come in Armand's mouth but found himself unable to. He screamed in his head and in his throat and his mind shattered, unable to sustain the sensations. There was too much. 

"There's my little whore," Armand said huskily, mouth finally releasing Nicki's cock with a wet pop. He sobbed helplessly, impaled on both ends, creating the loveliest tremors around Armand's cock, deep in Nicki's throat. He experimentally palpated Nicki's Adam's apple and neck, pleased with a boy's curiosity to be able to feel his cock on the other side of that wall. "That's what you were made for, Nicolas. To be ruled by your Master. And you love your Master, don't you? Your Master knows you. Look at you. What would Lestat think? What would Eleni think? Only I am your confidant. Only I am your Master."

Nicolas struggled to make sense of the words. He had heard Master before. The great dark looming presence in Nicki's life, thrusting itself into his soul and his mind, always there needling him through the fog of silence and storm of noise, only leaving him be when the music came. But it wasn’t what he needed, he wanted to need it, but he couldn’t, he, he, he didn't know, he didn't know, why couldn't Master tell him what someone would think? He opened his eyes and looked at Armand and he suddenly remembered as the stick drove home, shoving and scraping his prostate raw. 

"I hate you!" He tried to scream around Armand's cock. Armand's eyes widened, and Nicolas felt something tear inside him and warm blood running down his thighs. He'd broken something inside, something was wrong. Armand slipped out of his throat, choking him anew, and obediently he licked it clean of his own blood from the tears in his trachea. But he looked up and he understood and he repeated, softly, "I hate you." He knew he was lost. He had failed. He had failed his Master who was evil and who did evil things to him. 

"And you love me too," Armand corrected, by now recovered and shoving the walking stick even more deeply in, as if he were playing billiards with the balls. Nicolas tried to repeat what he heard, but his mind wouldn't wake up. "Ah, you are so loose now. So welcome. We could have the entire coven here and you'd be barely satisfied, you little whore."

Nicolas began to laugh. He laughed at Armand's empty threats and he laughed as Armand's walking stick widened his entrance and the balls fell out slowly, shaking out with the force of Nicki's laughs. He laughed and laughed and laughed as Armand slapped him and the golden balls clicked against the coins and the bowl and he laughed when Armand finished across his face, smearing his blood come all over one eye so he couldn't see. He couldn't stop laughing even when it was done and he was so so empty and he lay curled up around his precious sordid perverted cock, so desperate for release and so tempted by all these twisted machinations. He laughed until his voice died and his eyes unfocused and Armand left and returned with a blanket to wrap around him. 

Someone kissed him on the cheek gently, heedless of the soft laughs and giggles that shook him. His thighs shuddered to try to close, but they had been held open too long and he felt so empty and swollen besides, as if parts of him had swallowed up and replaced other areas of his body. He tried to lift his hand but could not muster the will or strength. Emptying himself had drained him in more ways than one, and after the exhaustion of the week he felt completely limp but for the constant laughter shaking him now. 

"You think you hate me. But soon you shall realize how much you need me. You are already doing it. And soon you will begin to love me. And you won't be able to stop." It felt like a curse laid with a kiss upon his forehead, and he closed his eyes, trying not to let the laughter turn into sobs. "I see you for the slut you really are. And you will beg for my touch before this is over."

And Nicolas finally gave a sigh, the laughter dying as Armand sank his fangs into his neck for another time to steal his blood and make him weak and wanting and unsatisfied. The world expanded and contracted to swallow Nicki in its darkness and he felt the quiet and the calmness wash over him before it dragged him down. 

He dreamt of riding horses with Lestat again and collapsing, panting and laughing, against the red cloak by a secret stream in the mountains. Idyllic. Lestat gave him a red apple and it was as sweet as a kiss from those generous lips, and he smiled and felt his heart surge against the darkness, afraid to lose Lestat as he had lost everything else he cared for. 

But Lestat kept smiling as he pushed Nicolas gently down on the blanket and they undressed each other hurriedly, eager boys with eager cocks, and Nicolas growled with desire and kissed Lestat hard, turning and flipping him over and driving into him from behind as the blond writhed backwards against him, their cries and pants mixing as they came as one. But it was Lestat who held him afterwards and kissed him good-bye and the world spun as Nicolas struggled to rise and stop him. 

"Don't leave me, cher Lestat, don't leave me all alone!" He pleaded, but hands were shoving him down and Lestat was walking away with a look of disgust on his face. 

"Whore. Slut. Bitch," Lestat spat at Nicki's feet and still Nicolas struggled against whoever was behind him. "Did you fuck your father and your brother and your sister before you came and let me fuck you? Is that all you're good for and all you wanted me for? You never listened to my talk of light! Of goodness!"

"No, that's not true, Lestat, please, you are everything to me! You are my light and my life!"

"Your light? All the better for you to find other cocks to suck into that greedy hole of yours?" Lestat asked, eyes hungry and feral. 

"No, no, it's not true," Nicolas wept, feeling himself drawn backward into another's embrace, turned over and fingered. 

“Time to open your eyes to the truth now.” He heard another voice and opened his eyes and realized Armand was looking at him tenderly and he heard himself whimper, felt his arm go out and grasp and curl against Armand's shoulder, grateful for the touch and the kindness, grateful for the respite despite himself. He could not disdain nor judge the flood of relief that ran through him as unwelcome, even as Armand fingered him and stroked against his walls, making his eyes roll up and his breath hitch and stutter. His cock rose again in its cage and trembled with need. Armand's long long fingers reached inside Nicki's sensitive, scraped-raw walls and twisted against a secret spot, hard, and Nicolas screamed in thanks. 

When he awoke he realized he was back in his coffin, clothed in bloody rags once more, but he ached inside and he felt so terribly empty, that echo that had defined every waking moment and crowded out every other thought so that he went mad just trying to bear it, was gone! He sat up, shuddering as he felt the aching soreness and the clenching muscle, puckering and grasping at nothing. The coven master hadn't even taken him last night, no more than two torturous digits. And he needed to feel full again, maybe not the bursting pregnant pain of before but his body longed to be filled substantially. 

"Oh good, how are you feeling my darling?" Eleni asked, having opened the lid and looked down at the fledgling in repose. He blinked up at her and could not find an answer. 

"I am to dress you for the premiere," Eleni said, trying to make her voice soothing as she guided Nicolas out of his coffin in one fluid motion. He stared at her numbly, feeling hollow inside. Could she fill him up, he wondered, and felt immediately repulsed by the thought. What had Armand done to him?

'Made you into his whore. His personal slut. Didn't he say?' A voice told him. He balled his hands into fists, cringing. It wasn't true. It wasn't! But his insides ached and his cock was still in its cage and Eleni--oh dear God Eleni was trying to undress him! She would discover--

"What's wrong, dear heart?" She asked gently, ever so gently, trying to calm him like a startled animal as he shied away from her hands at his ragged bloody breeches. 

"I can dress myself!" He snapped fearfully, his voice raw and hoarse, and she looked hurt for a moment before she backed away, holding her hands up to show she wasn't a threat. Eyes on him still, she went to the clothes she had laid out and gestured to them. 

He tried to rise, fell, flung her arms away, then gritted his teeth, willing his weak and boneless legs to move. He stumbled to the pile of clothing with care--too empty, too empty, nothing inside, nothing to hold on to and fill him and hold him pinned in space with agony--and shucked his shirt. Hurriedly he spilled some water outside of the bowl as he dipped the washcloth and wiped his torso down, but it seemed to satisfy Eleni, though she did not leave. 

"Eleni! Do you mind?" He asked, telling himself he wasn't trembling with need. She looked betrayed for a second. She'd always dressed him in times like these. There was no modesty between them. How could there be between the founders, who had all taken Nicolas' blood as a mortal and thus violated every part of his being except the physical? But she was his friend. His confidante. The one who protected him from Armand. And he had been nothing but frightened and angry at her tonight upon waking. 

A knock at the door interrupted their little drama, and a vision of an angelic monster dressed in black and red and silver stepped through the doorway. Nicolas found himself backing away and plastering himself against the wall. He could feel his shoulder blades digging into the wood, but truthfully it helped hold him standing. His legs would give out any moment now. 

"Now is not the best time--" Eleni began, still trying to shield him. 

"I would have words before the premiere and the gala," Armand pronounced, and despite herself Eleni bowed her head. It was hard to resist the old ways still, and Armand was an old one regardless of how you looked at power. "Leave us."

She gave Nicolas a concerned look, then went through the doorway. A frisson of relief went through him even though he wanted her to stay, and the fear was high in him when she pulled the door closed. 

"Are you ready to direct tonight?" Armand asked quietly, looking at Nicolas' torso. He quickly shoved on the shirt, covering his nakedness. He felt his cock stirring, dizzying him with the pain of arousal. He stumbled, grasping for the back of his chair. 

"Get the fuck out of here and find out for yourself tonight," he said once he had steadied himself. How dare he! How dare he leave Nicolas empty and wanting and--'like a whore, gagging for his cock, for his hands, for his tongue, for anything he wished to put in there, the entire Royal Treasury and the Treasurer to boot!' Nicolas gritted his teeth against the voice. 'Give in. It hurts. It hurts without it. Let him teach me what it's like to not be free. To have him define our world. It would be so wonderful and you are so tired.'

"You cannot talk to me that way," Armand said, eyes narrowing. He was pressed against Nicolas faster than he could blink, and when he cupped the violinist's groin, tearing a moan of abandoned desire from him, he clicked his tongue as he forced him to his knees. Nicolas felt dizzy, swaying from the touch on his cock, and he looked with unfocused eyes down at the ground before he sat back on his heels. "You need my attentions, it would appear." He caught himself nodded, then stopped, shaking his head, then leaned forward as if to nuzzle Armand's leg with his face. 

But Nicolas seemed to wake, and he seemed to be listening to something else because he broke off mid-conversation with "however he wishes it! I am my own man and you can try all your little tricks to brainwash me otherwise but I will always be myself!"

"I wouldn't want you any other way," Armand said after a moment. "Only I truly understand you, all those vicious secrets and precious sins. Does Eleni know how empty and loose you feel, how you're begging for touch and starved for something in you?"

"That's not true!" Nicolas choked out with tears in his voice. 'But that is exactly true and we have been fighting a stupid battle with no one but ourselves. Armand will show us the way. The alternative we provoke him into is pure hell. Unless you would like to spend the rest of your nights as a barely recognizable heap of broken bones and skin, trying to remember which body part came first.' Nicolas shuddered at the memory, of those three, perhaps four, perhaps more, nights of pure torture. It wasn't the pain that did it, for Armand had had him whipped, and he had suffered pain under Les Innocents. It was the endlessness of it all, the helplessness against what was becoming an immutable law: Nicolas had to suffer. Armand was just carrying out a natural law in the order of the universe, and the gratitude and love and relief that flooded Nicolas when those nights were done felt wrong and terrible because he should feel nothing but hate and vengeance against his tormentor and yet his worship and the comfort he took from Armand's hands and embrace and kisses felt so so right, for Armand was merciful and could be kind and loving if only Nicolas would stop being so unruly. The waiting was the worst, not knowing what or when the next punishment would come. If only Nicolas would give up part of himself, just as Armand had given up abiding by a natural law in ceasing Nicolas' punishments. If inly Nicolas welcomed it and accepted that this was all he was for, it would not be nearly as terrible. But it was so hard. It was not easy for Nicolas to go against his very nature when Armand could shift and discard himself when he needed to to survive. 

But then Armand had crouched down, Armand deigned to look at Nicolas and he passed a thumb over Nicolas' bottom lip. He closed his eyes and shivered, wanting more, wanting to suck on it, horrified that his body and his needs should betray him like this. Armand's soft lips pressed against his, pillowy and sucking down his sense of self, his essence, and he felt like his world was tilting and he was drowning happily in Armand, letting it happen finally, but he jolted backwards, remembering what this creature had done to him, and the moment of seduction was over, leaving him breathless and dizzy as he watched the look of disappointment on Armand's face fade. A pocket watch flicked open. "Dress yourself," Armand said, pointedly showing him the face. He had fifteen minutes to curtain. 

Nicolas crawled to his feet, thinking his legs weren't working very well still, and shucked his breeches. He cleaned himself quickly with a washcloth and suddenly smelled a cold wet needle of fire sinking into him, not enough to fill what felt like a cavern of grasping, wanting heat, but enough to be a sounding stick. Armand had shoved it inside him abruptly before he could tug his clean breeches on, and he jolted in surprise at the intrusion, burning as it did without any lubricant to help it. 

"Leave me be, sire!" He protested, trying to slap Armand's lingering hand away. The moistness and the irritation remained, and the sharp gingery smell grew stronger as Armand withdrew what appeared to be a very long eye dropper. It was empty. "What the hell is that? What did you put in me?"

"Something to entertain you from the distractions of being so empty. This way you can give a lively performance," Armand said with a slap of his bum and a suspiciously friendly smile. He tucked the eye dropper back in a black velvet bag and bowed. "Break a leg at tonight's performance, M'sieur. Come to my office afterwards if the gala does not entertain you." They had taken to holding little opening night soirees, Nicki's idea, to make the cast seem a little more approachable to mortals and less targets of suspicion during the growing season of unrest. 

Nicolas glared as the coven master retreated and closed the door. Wincing from the pain of the intrusion, he slid on the black breeches. It did not feel like Armand had filled him with anything. The eye dropper was only big enough to really apply an ointment, and he felt too much of a burn right now to know what it had been. Perhaps he would discover later when it began to take effect. 

He buttoned his breeches, bending over to shine his shoes and fuss with his stockings, and felt a cold trickle inside him heating up. Was it the ointment? Feeling strangely hot, he donned the sapphire blue frock coat picked out in gold embroidery, one of his least favorite coats, and set about arranging his linen cravat. None of this expensive lace Armand indulged in, Valenciennes when he could get away with it. It was preposterous.

The burning was getting worse, and now he was itching, and to his horror he found himself wriggling his bum in an effort to get some relief as he tried to do his hair. He did not have much time before he had to appear and he couldn't even get his hair brushed, his own ass was burning from within, threatening to obliterate every thought with red-hot itchiness. It made his toes and teeth and his fingertips tingle and he shoved his hair back as best he could and tied it with a blue ribbon. His part was not going to go away without some serious brushing and pomade, and dear God, what had Armand put inside him? He felt like he was burning up, like his insides would destroy him, and all he wanted to do was shove, hell, he'd shove a hand up his own arsehole and scratch and claw to get rid of this feeling if he could!

"Nicki, are you ready?" Eleni asked, knocking on the door. With pleasant surprise she exclaimed "why, you look so handsome! So unassuming!" when he went out to present himself, standing stiffly and trying not to wriggle and scratch himself. It would be of no avail anyway. Relief would not come from outside, but until then it was absolute agony. He wanted to scratch! He wanted to find a corner and just tear himself up. "The audience will love you, especially with this sort of play about artifice."

"You think so," Nicolas murmured, letting her tug him to the stage door. They could hear Laurent giving the customary evening welcome, and then the house lights being blown out or dimmed. He burned and he imagined himself a small ember or flame or St. Elmo's Fire, as a sailor from Polynesia had described to him once, floating and weaving in the air as he passed through the stage door and took a bow to the audience. He climbed down into the orchestra pit, only half-attentive to the pages before him. He could hear the music in his head and he knew it instinctively for he had written it. Why they thought he needed to practice with the ensemble baffled him, but he supposed it was better than someone else being tasked with it. And it got him out of his room. His eyes flickered up and he spotted Armand in his private box, silent and judging as he glowed in the darkness. Damn him! He longed for some relief and he knew Armand possessed the key to whatever was consuming him from the inside out. He felt like a bitch in heat, wanting nothing more than something to fill him up and to take all this need and burn and irritation and sensation away. It would hurt but it would be so much better afterwards. It would be just what he needed, just what someone like him needed.

He felt the music swell and the dancers come on stage and he tried his best to focus. But his lower being throbbed and his cock ached, and he could only think of sex and Armand and being used and filled and scratched and dear God what was happening to him? It frightened him, how his body could feel this way, how it could betray him. Already he saw the worried looks on his musicians' faces. 

But before he knew it they had made it to the interval, and he panted, leaning on the small wooden stand they had constructed. Usually someone approached him to ask a question or give his compliments, but he refused to turn around and acknowledge them. He kept his head bowed, trying to breathe through the scorching pain, hoping no one would see if he shifted from one foot to another as if he could scratch himself that way. He glared up at Armand's box and received not even a glance in return. Armand didn't care. Why should he? Nicolas was just an employee, and he had given Armand no reason to cherish him as anything beyond a disobedient fledgling who wouldn't take to any of his lessons. God, he had not imagined! What was this? He couldn't think. He couldn't think about what he could do next. He swept his gaze as the musicians took their places once more and fantasized about taking them all, having Delphine on top with Pascal fucking him from behind, no, first with the scroll, the head of his violin, then Pascal and Pierre fucking his arse roughly together, both at once, stretching it out while François shoved inside his mouth, choking him, and then Franz and Hugo both fisting him roughly while he begged for mercy as Josephine burned him with hot coals and he was ruined from inside out--"No!" He whispered loudly, clutching at his little wooden podium, drawing concerned looks.

His eyes flickered up to Armand's impassive face and his cock twitched despite itself. God. He was slowly losing the will to stay sane in the face of all this, to just let go and let the voices and the sounds and the sheer noise consume him. Nicolas de Lenfent suffered. But Nicolas the Mad, he did something else, something transformative that no one else understood. He did not struggle the way his sane self did. He belonged in this world. 

But the lights were going down and his solo was coming up and he was burning up. He lifted the violin and felt the red hot agony shoot from deep inside him through his arm. It was supposed to be a reunion of lovers, but Nicolas made it scorchingly passionate, the longing and burning apparent in every glide and pizzicato. Mortals in the audience shivered uncomfortably. Ladies fanned themselves and the gentlemen folded their hands or crossed their legs and covered their laps with their programs. On stage Sophie and Adam reacted accordingly, all but flaunting the obscenity laws by gesturing the act of consummating their love for one another. The audience grew hot, their breathing panting as they watched the lovers twist with the music. Nicolas struggled to keep it in check, but the burning was intolerable now, and he couldn't help writhing in air around his instrument, bending and twisting as if this would relieve his need to rut. He felt feverish, like a cat in heat, and the moans in the audience gave him the only outlet for the need for someone inside him to claw it all out. Mortals bit their lips and those closest to Nicolas held onto their seats firmly so they did not rush forward and fling themselves upon him. 

After the climax of the solo, the rest of the play seemed to be a blur. The gala was their most well-attended yet, the bodies shoving against each other and the cold pale beauties of the cast. Patrons asked after Nicolas, who did his best standing beside Eleni, wiping at the blood sweat on his face, but he barely understood what he said. 

"Perhaps you need to rest. That was a most enervating solo tonight, Nicki," Eleni cooed calmingly, a hand on his arm. God! He was so empty! If she would kiss him, shove her dancer's staff for keeping time inside--no, these were Armand's ideas! These--he faltered, backing away. He couldn't stop these thoughts. The burning was settling in and he couldn't, couldn't think!

"I'm, that's, I'm going to--" he stammered, and her expression was so understanding and forgiving that he couldn't stand it anymore. He didn't even bow or give his farewells, but bolted, barely able to think through opening doors, walking and putting one foot after the other. Faces blurred past him but none of them could help him. He could put off these fantasies forever but they would never be the same as the one person he feared and the one person permitted to control him in such matters. 

He shook his head, hands shaking as they tried to take off his coat and store it in his armoire. No, Armand wasn't permitted. Armand simply was. He had set this up and had made it unbearable for Nicolas to think anyone else might have anything to do with those carnal pleasures Armand had laid claim to as the only things that could distract him from the work. Nicolas had to think of other things to do the same. He couldn’t allow Armand to narrow his life down into nothing more than pain and sexual pleasure. He had to replace this perverse need that Armand had cultivated, he--with a desperate sound he clawed off the coat, discarding it on his floor, and fled to Armand's office.

He beat his fists upon the door and found himself kneeling at the sound of the clicking of Armand's tongue. It was agony and salvation at once, to give in at last and do what Armand expected and wanted and had trained in him like a dog. He didn't want this. But he burned for it. 

He looked up at Armand as the elder approached him, feeling lost and tethered to this presence, and when he was close enough Nicolas nosed his breeches with a whimper. Armand stroked his hair and the top of his head, making him shiver in anticipation. 

Please, he thought, but didn't say. Make it stop. It was impossible to stop his lower regions from writhing now, so terrible was the burning and the irritation of whatever Armand had inserted into him. He couldn't think, and he felt hot and feverish as he leaned against Armand, afraid to grasp him, hands limp at his sides as he rocked back on his heels, sitting on them and trying to nudge his aching muscles into some form of relief. 

"You have suffered," Armand said, almost sounding sympathetic as he let Nicolas press his cheek against his hand and kiss his fingertips, his eyes closed in desperate bliss for any kind of contact. "But you obeyed this week. And you shall be rewarded." Nicolas gave an anguished sigh, afraid of what was to come, angry and disappointed at himself for his weakness. But he couldn't keep fighting. He couldn't save everything of himself. Not forever. He couldn't escape and he could forget or he could fight and lose or he could distract himself and still become someone else. Either way Armand was transforming him ever so slowly into the plaything he wanted, and it was slowly dawning on Nicolas that he would have to ruin himself in his own way before Armand could, if he wanted to escape this fate at all. At least then he would still have some say over who he was and what he would become.

But tonight he needed this. He needed the rest and the reward and just once, just once to permit himself the comfort and the peace and the pleasure Armand could grant and had taught him to accept. Things he would have run screaming from he almost writhed for, as Armand stripped him quickly of his clothing, his own consciousness a blur as suddenly cold cold oil was fed into him with a hose. He gasped, uncertain how he ended up hands and knees on the floor, but he was grateful for the small relief as the burning faded. It made him antsy still, sensitive and needing to be filled, but his tears were gone and all he could do was push backwards, tilting his arse high to offer himself helplessly to his master. His expression crumpled in humiliation. Just tonight. Please, just tonight, let him stop fighting. It would break him but Armand's absence and all the things inside him had already shattered him every single night. What was yet another?

He gulped as Armand slid a smooth finger into his passage, followed quickly by two more, stretching him even though he'd been loosened all week. He panted, overstimulated, helplessly responsive to sensation. He tilted his hips backwards for more, only to hiss when Armand sank his nails into his hip, stilling him. But he was still so empty, even as Armand slid another finger, and another, until his entire fist was impossibly squeezed inside Nicolas' entrance, twisting and drawing ragged shouts from him. Armand pushed him, stroking roughly over his prostate and shoving with enough force to lift him off the stone tiles, and he wailed, no longer able to hold back his sounds, his cock struggling and bobbing in its leather cage. He couldn't do this anymore. But it was what he wanted and needed. It was what Armand prescribed. He'd have to love it. He couldn't fight it. 

And it still wasn't right. It still wasn't what he wanted, and he pushed back again, sobbing, falling into the throes of blind need and lust. 

"Ple-I need you master," he barely whispered, his head shaking back and forth, elbows hard against the stone, arse helplessly in the air as all of him leaned towards Armand, who was still clothed. 

"Oui? Say it then. Tell me what you want. Tell me with precise detail," Armand said, slowly rotating his fist as he pulled it out of Nicolas' stretched passage, pulsing against his prostate. 

"I-" Nicolas choked out, gasping every so often from the strain. "I need you inside me," he said to his shame. 

"I am inside you."

"I need, I need your cock."

"It's right here."

"I need your--oh god--fuck--I need you to fuck me hard with your cock until I scream! I need you to let me fucking come already! It's been a week and I've been full of nothing! Nothing! It's nothing if it's not you and pl-please don't make me beg."

"That is précisement what I want. You responded so spiritedly during your performance. Do not lie and say you are not willing."

Another twist. A full withdrawal. He was so empty. So alone. And he would suffer. Armand would see to it. 

"Please," he whispered, eyes clenched tightly. "Please fuck me with your cock, master. Just…just give it to me. Please.”

"Very well. Good boy," Armand said, relishing the shiver that went down Nicki's spine at those words. He caressed Nicki's hair, then lined himself up with his entrance and pushed in. His entrance was loose and sloppy from what it had endured, but past that ring was right and hot and pulsing. Nicolas moaned loudly, crying as his legs tightened, his muscles clenching around Armand's cock. Finally. Finally. 

"Thank you," he sobbed, his voice breaking. "Thank you. Thank you."

The pleasure drove through him, up through his spine and into the back of his skull, and slowly he fell into the blindness of being owned by Armand. He could feel Armand’s hips moving forcefully against his, and he tried to meet them, only to be lifted up and intently driven into. He found himself crying out, sobbing as Armand pounded into him again and again, and he felt the want every time Armand withdrew and the fulfillment of his wretched purpose whenever he slid home. Nicolas lost himself in pull and push of Armand’s fucking, knowing it wasn’t right, knowing this wasn’t what he wanted, knowing the shame and the guilt and the pain that washed over him even as he begged with relief for more, more, more, keening when Armand withdrew and flipped him into his back and thrust into him again, tearing the skin on his back raw and bloody on the stones beneath them. He tilted his hips and let Armand cant them to hit his prostate and he cried out again, terrified by the complete power and control, terrified that this would end and he would have to go back to the suffering and the rebellion that was all he knew of himself. Why couldn’t he just lose himself in this?

But then all thought left him because Armand’s hands were trailing down to his stiff and weeping cock, and suddenly the leather was gone and he was coming, his buttocks and legs clenching, his toes curling, and he screamed as the mere air drew climax after climax out of him, making him spill over Armand’s hand and his own chest, hot and bloody and so painful. He kept coming as Armand drilled into him relentlessly, his prostate sore and swollen and sensitive, and helplessly he writhed again, his entire body a raw nerve, electrified, thrashing as he came dry, his body struggling for the blood and the energy to respond and repay the debt of a week’s torment. 

He sobbed and words escaped him, and he stopped thinking, instead crawling and scrabbling and shouting and begging and weeping. He screamed again as his world moved and his mind blanked and the next moment he saw Armand’s face again smiling and he was afraid and the shock took him again and he came sobbing, feeling drained and dry and wrung out. 

His eyes kept rolling up in his head and Armand tilted it back, finally sinking his fangs into his throat, spilling his blood against his lips and his skin. Nicolas gagged and choked as Armand drank deeply, still rolling his hips in and out at a steady pace. His fingers were weak claws against some part, maybe Armand’s arms or the floor or his own scalp or his hips, and Armand drained the blood and the life and the love out of him, consuming his entire being, and Nicolas finally let go, finally stopped fighting, finally embraced the inevitable. His limp and boneless body jolted and bounced as Armand’s thrusts pushed him back and forth.

He could not stop coming and it was the only movement his body was capable of, and when Armand finally released him he whimpered, gasping as his body jolted with each aftershock, back arching violently and hips thrusting forward uncontrollably. Armand looked down at him with the half-lidded eyes of a god and he trembled and sighed and gave up everything, letting him fuck the essence of himself from him until he exploded, molten and hot and obliterating everything about Nicolas from the inside out. 

He could feel Armand’s powerful blood, hot and teeming inside him, healing him even as Armand withdrew from his limp and boneless body. He breathed in Nicolas’ scent, making him shudder and tremble, and kissed his eyelids and even licked the blank open eyes behind them. Experimentally, Armand caressed Nicki’s cock, making the young fledgling cry out, but it was an empty kind of reaction, that of a blind animal uncomprehending of cause or meaning for its suffering. There was none for Nicolas, in any case. He was too exhausted for thought, and could only wait for whatever came next. 

Satisfied, Armand stuck his cock in front of Nicolas’ mouth, and said, “lick it clean.” Without even looking Nicolas dipped his head forward where Armand knelt, and licked at the coven master’s cock in small, tentative, and sloppy strokes, much to Armand’s perverse delight. He tucked himself away and restored his clothing, then looked down at Nicolas’ naked body, prone on the stone floor.

“You’ve done well, my pet,” he murmured, kissing Nicolas again on the forehead, and the violinist made some indeterminate sound of acknowledgment, a soft sound that Armand thrilled to hear, for it was soft and submissive and had none of the fight and rage and fury that was so troublesome before. That could come later, when he commanded it to resurface, so long as it was only ever under his control. For now, Nicolas did not even demonstrate any awareness by shuddering or shaking or any of those sorry pathetic little coping actions he attempted to make sense of what Armand wreaked upon his body and mind and soul.

He grabbed a blanket and gently, eased Nicolas sitting, and bundled him in it as if swaddling an infant. He lifted the fledgling easily though Nicolas was a good head taller, and mentally called for his coach.


	8. Bird Song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even Armand is not infallible. Nicolas makes another fledgling.
> 
> This chapter contains: Mental Instability, Mental Health Issues, Mental Disintegration, Mental Breakdown, feral!Nicki, (briefly) sane!Nicki, Sexual Slavery, Master-Slave Relationship, Group Sex, Nonconsensual Gangbang, Object Insertion, Sexual Assault, Brief Referenced Watersports, Implied/Referenced Minor Original Character Death, Bondage, Emotional Manipulation, Intersex Minor Original Character, Murder, Forced Crossdressing, Humiliation, Nonconsensual Oral Sex, Multiple Orgasms, Forced Orgasm, Bondage, Rape Aftermath, Hurt/Comfort, Torture, Psychological Torture, Horror, Gore, Nonconsensual Anal Sex, Spitroasting

When Nicolas’ mind returned to him, he realized absently that he was well and truly broken. He couldn’t understand it anymore, nothing, none of what he had tried to do to fight and retain his sanity, none of what he had tried to do to negotiate a compromise of equal lovers, none of what he had tried to do to obtain mercy in exchange for sacrifice. Armand wanted none of those things but his complete and utter breakdown into his obedient pet, without any sense of self or command. And he had made Nicolas need him, connected the thought of Armand in his head with touch and companionship and pleasure and blood. He thirsted so much in his loneliness and Armand had presence to spare, to dispense to a desperate and starving man constantly drained of blood every night no matter what he tried. The past few months had prepared Nicolas so slowly and subtly for it that it had only taken the two weeks to deeply cement Armand’s role as his ultimate lover and master. The young former mortal and now fiery stormy fledgling never even had a chance. He had fought against all the wrong things, had thought to reason with wild instinct and bargain with invaluable worth.

And if he was going to take a holiday from sanity, there was no better way to do it than now, he supposed, as his last conscious thought left him and his master returned. If he didn’t think, he didn’t struggle, and if he didn’t struggle, he didn’t feel those awful instincts to fight. And if he didn’t fight, he wouldn’t suffer. But if he didn’t think, he wasn’t Nicolas, was he? If he wasn’t Nicolas, he wouldn’t suffer. He was Armand’s boy, Armand’s pet. This would do for now, until he felt well enough to return. Until something else broke. Until the treatment finally was too much.

He was lying on a divan, but he was naked and Armand did not seem surprised that he did not even try to cover himself. A clicking noise made him jerk and he suddenly found himself on his knees, staring dully at the floor as Armand petted him, making soothing, praising noises. They were words, but he didn’t want words. Words made him think. Thoughts made him suffer. But the clicking he knew well and the familiarity of it was a comfort, Armand's soft touch a luxury that made everything else bearable, the knowledge that Nicolas was this nothing, this worthless hole that had to be punished and taught and commanded. Armand tugged on his hand gently and he began to rise, only to be pushed firmly back onto all fours. Armand turned and bid him follow, and like a dog he crawled after his master through unfamiliar, polished wooden floors, out a pair of doors onto a dusty gravel path. A new moon made everything dark and blind and he smelled green, fresh air, not city air, and sleeping birds. He heard the trees and could see the sound of expectation seeping through the night, and he was suddenly very very thirsty.

He must have whined or made some kind of sound, because Armand hushed him, mercifully, without punishing him. He ducked his head, but he could feel his entire body, his skin, strain for whatever it was that called to him. The dull dark pounding. In the distance there was the hulking mass of something, a rectangle with lights in every few windows, enormous and squatting. He realized in another life he had been here, at this palace in a small town they called Versailles. The audience had been brief and it was not with the king, but with a music master. This was the garden. He could taste the leaves in the air. He thought he heard music but the moon was dark, a new moon not yet woken. 

He sniffed and lay down on his belly, nosing at the grass as if that held the blood he thirsted for, and he whined softly, looking expectantly up at Armand. His master was unhappy. His master was waiting and agitated and impatient, and he was going to punish him. What could he do? He rose onto his knees and nuzzled against Armand’s groin, trying to ask for mercy, only to be backhanded violently. He fell back onto the gravel path, afraid to make any sound as the stones cut into him. He was so thirsty, and the pounding was getting louder and closer.

“Halloa! Is that you, M’sieur de Romanus?”

Someone was talking. There were torches in the night.

“Put those torches out,” Armand said steadily, and his voice was frightening and so displeased. He wondered how much longer he could remain unnoticed before he was punished. Before he wasn't sure where his limbs were and could see everything inside him screaming in pain. Not for the first time he refused to face the question of why no one in the coven ever heard, ever noticed, ever asked. He was mad, they said. Armand was the coven master, in so many ways, and the elder by centuries, timeless. Nicolas, he was loathe to admit to himself, sometimes became confused about where he was, when he was. He'd be so easily distracted Félix would catch him wandering just moments before dawn, dragging him screaming into the darkness like some ghast from a children's story, a stranger come to steal him away again for no reason Nicolas could remember. Armand was the coldest and most observant of vampires. Whom would they believe?

“Should we be doing this here? There is a copse not far.”

“You’re always so worried. Let us see this creature you claim to possess.”

“Voila,” Armand replied, and stepped aside. There was a nudge of his master’s foot in his side, and he crawled tentatively forward, afraid to look up. But there was the pounding and the blood, and the gasps made him peek and there were five men, mortals, blood teeming through all of them, and they were looking at him hungrily and one had his hand at his groin where an obvious bulge was growing. Nicolas whimpered, trying to hide behind Armand’s stockinged leg.

“My God.”

"Is he a simpleton?"

"He was once a university student. Stubbornly intelligent. He is not fully broken yet. Watch for his teeth."

"You weren't jesting. The boy's been..."

“Why should I jest about this? You are aware of my reluctance about this arrangement.”

Arrangement. What arrangement? Arrangement? Nicolas felt himself becoming more and more aware, and it was terrifying him. He didn’t want to understand this. Something bad was going to happen, he wouldn’t want to think about it. He looked up at Armand with worry, but his master didn’t deem him a single glance. He was a blank slate and he stared at the five men with dead eyes.

“Give him to us for tonight and we shall ensure your people’s safety.”

“The safety of all who join your little theatre.”

“You can set whatever plays and shows you like. I don’t care if you end up killing a stuck pig or a peasant on there or the queen herself.”

“The irony of such treasonous words on these grounds, M’sieur. It is further to my shame that you were even able to force my hand into this.” Nicolas felt indignation and anxiety rise in him. Someone was forcing Armand?

“We have more cause to hate royalty than those bourgeois. It is not unwise. And you are making a good investment.”

“And he won’t understand? He won’t say a word?”

“Does he look like he understands?” Armand grasped his chin and forced it upwards, drawing a panicked cry from him. He tried to stay on his hands and knees, but Armand was pulling him up into the air, and he hung there, almost choking, as the men leered down at him. One man tweaked at his cock and he couldn't stifle the cry of pain and desire. Armand had taught him so well, had changed him so much. He thrust his hips forward helplessly and burned with shame. Armand patted his buttock gently, calming him. 

“Remarkable.”

“And beautiful besides.”

“Agreed then. We shall take our pleasure.”

“Five hours, five of us. Unless you would like to join?”

Armand shook his head. “I will have a word with him. He needs his commands like any pet. And as I said, the boy is not completely broken yet."

"What do you mean by that?"

"He looks about as broken as the boys you see in the brothels."

"He still thinks he has agency, that his obedience can be negotiated with subservience and prostrations. School your tongues, for he thinks himself a man still, worthy of speech and language when permitted, and he will comprehend your words, for your convenience in governing him or otherwise."

His master’s face loomed large in his vision and his expression opened, ready to receive any order.

“These mortals will have their way with you. Do not bite them. Do not hurt them. Let them do with you as you would allow me. Do you understand?”

Nicolas’ eyes widened in terror as the words gradually sank in.

“If you do not agree, I have no qualms about muzzling you and ripping off all your limbs so they might have use of even the wounds,” Armand replied.

“N-n-“ Nicolas tried to refuse, but the terror was keeping him from it. He tried to back away on his elbows, heedless of his nakedness, and his mouth opened and closed like a fish. Armand yanked him by the shoulder to him, clapping something into his mouth. Nicolas spat and spat at the hard oily thing, and realized it was a large lump of wax and beeswax, two large slabs that encapsulated his teeth and fangs, turning his mouth into one useless soft smooth tract. He pawed at it, trying to get it out, and Armand twisted his wrist, breaking his fingers. He cried out softly, afraid to make any sounds, and gnashed his teeth together, but the wax was too thick and he couldn’t get any purchase with his tongue. “Ple-!” he tried to beg, but Armand slapped him hard enough to make his ears ring.

“If you put up any fight, any struggle at all,” Armand hissed, low and dangerous, “I will kill Justine without a second thought. Remember this should you ever want to fight them or feed upon them. It wouldn’t be difficult for me at all.”

Nicolas froze.

“That’s it. You were doing so well yesterday. Do you remember yesterday?” Armand asked, tweaking Nicolas’ cock, drawing a yelp and then a moan from him. Nicolas rubbed his cheek against Armand’s hand, his brain shutting down at once. “That’s a good boy,” Armand supplied, patting his head and rubbing his cock again. “Do what the mortals say. Do everything they want. Then I’ll make sure you get what you need.” Nicolas moaned, nodding as Armand brought his cock to attention, and stumbled as he was shoved off to the feet of the half-circle of mortals.

“Gentlemen. He is yours.”

Nicolas opened his eyes as hot hands grasped at him and twisted his unresisting limbs this way and that, arranging him. He had to go away now. He had to let them do this. It didn't matter so long as Armand came afterwards and fixed it and made the world right. He recalled a dim distant promise to such effect, and let his mind slip away into oblivious and helpless sensation.

Burning lips wrenched painful kisses from him, and he screamed in agony as he was entered dry from behind, someone holding him up by his arms as he was pounded into while on his knees, his mouth full of someone’s cock. He choked and wept as he was used, his cock stepped on and ground upon, his balls slapped and tugged mercilessly. He felt dizzy as he was turned, his lower passage opened and stretched and torn again and again, and he knew it wasn’t just hot mortal body parts that explored his insides but shoes and canes and other implements that held him open as rough laughter sounded around him. 

He mewled softly, tears in his eyes, and he was so hungry and thirsty and there was always this inviting boiling hot member in his throat, but he had no way to bite, impotent and pained and straining for some satisfaction. Yet all he had to do was seek out his master’s face, impassive and blank as he watched him being taken again and abused and kicked, for him to moan in pleasure, knowing this was what was wanted of him and that this was what he was made for. So long as it was his master’s will.

But this was hard, yes, very hard, and he retched more than once, for something distinctly not semen was drizzled over him, and he wept and felt himself tear even more. Somehow they had two cocks inside him and he could hardly understand the world anymore, how could he be so bisected, so full and hinged in such a crisis, and yet still have another in his mouth, his face covered in sticky, salty, and bitter fluids, struggling to breathe and arch and move the way they were urging him, the other two tweaking his tortured cock and tugging on his nipples, slicing into them with pocket knives. He moaned, his head lolling as they used him, frozen in agony and fuller and more strained than he had ever imagined, and he retreated from all thought and all sensation too and became no more than a doll.

It seemed as if things were happening to him from far away, and he thought he heard sobbing and screaming and pleading but it must have been a mere illusion. Dumbly he watched as he struggled despite himself, and decided this was nothing he wanted a part of, and turned away.

By the fifth hour his mind had entirely flown. When before he had resolved to stop thinking and serve as Armand’s creature so long as it gave him respite, now he was no longer even of presence of mind to make the decision. A creature of no more than the strongest sensation that burst through the fog of incomprehension, he lay broken on the grass, leaves in his hair, sticks and cigars stuffed up his entrance, cuts and bite marks all over his torso and the dark circles of his nipples barely hanging onto his skin. Someone spit on his face and there was a warm stream of urine on his torso. 

Some whispered low words, angry and placating. Then the five went away. He breathed shallowly, eyes glazed and unseeing, and he did not even notice his master stepping near and looming over him. His eyes failed to spot the fury on his face and he made no sound even as his broken arm was bent forwards and he was picked up gently and carried into the night.

When he awoke he didn’t think either. He lay on a sofa, in a room, and he waited. Presently someone came in but surely that someone would do what they would and then they would leave, so he waited. For what, he didn’t know.

But then there was a touch at his temple and another at his lips and he stared into air and it gradually resolved itself into a teary-eyed youth, remorse written over his face. He looked at this image blankly, letting its meaning dissolve.

“I didn’t want to. They threatened the theatre and they outsmarted us. Me! They wanted to play with you, they said, and they could ensure our survival, the entire coven’s, for one night with you. I made a decision only a coven master could.” Arms surrounded him and he sighed at the warmth and the comfort. “I did not want to. I swear I did not want to.”

Nicolas gazed upon this beautiful weeping Cupid with half-lidded eyes, utterly exhausted. Something in him wanted to scream and rage but the new lessons he had been taught shut these feelings away, afraid of punishment. 

"Please forgive me. I won't let anyone hurt you," Armand promised, kissing his eyelids and his lips and his cheeks, making him sigh at the soft and tender touches. He had done exactly as his master had asked and now he would be rewarded. Without intending to his hips jerked upwards into the air, cock hardening and filling with blood. Armand stirred, and looked down with a smile. "What a good and obedient performance," he remarked, and something inside Nicolas curled in pleasure and disgust and he thrust upwards again. "You know, you really are very much like a pup this way, rutting against the very swirls in the air in heat."

He did not want to take comfort in this his master's praise and gentle touch, but he was so alone, which was different from mere loneliness, and even the pain was a relief, so the pleasure was a divine gift. No one had looked at him with such desire in such a long time. Armand touched the tip of Nicolas' cock with one long finger, circling the sensitive head and the droplet of precome that had already formed, drawing a whimper from the younger vampire. 

"But we have been gone for nearly a week, and the theatre needs you," Armand whispered, and Nicolas looked at him in bewilderment. That was another life, he couldn't, he couldn't be both! But all thought fled as Armand sucked on the tip of his cock, so hard it was almost painful. 

"Once more," Armand said, and opened him up so gently his lips trembled and tears welled and spilled from his eyes in gratitude. He still felt sore and aching from his terrible treatment and Armand was tenderly and slowly sliding his cock home, meeting no resistance from Nicki's abused and loosened hole. He even tilted until Nicolas made a choking noise of surprise when he reached his prostate, and began to thrust with unerring precision upon the spot that made babbling sounds escape from Nicolas' lips as he tossed his head, helpless to sensation, sobbing in gratitude for this indulgence. He was, after all, only for Armand's pleasure and nothing more. 

Armand looked glorious above him, merciful Armand, and he thought he would explode from the overwhelming tide of fear and relief and hate and love and anger. Armand pressed at his lips and caressed his face and neck, and with a final shove that made Nicki's breath catch in his throat and his voice cry out like a virgin despoiled, he sank his fangs into his neck and dove into his blood. Nicolas spurted wildly into Armand's hands as he pulsed and contracted around Armand's cock, milking the orgasm from him as they moaned as one from the pleasure of the bite. 

Armand always took care to shield himself, but with the clarity of someone abused into dehumanized submission and a fearful love, Nicolas' mind was an open field and Armand stepped through its barrenness with pronounced discomfort. The ocean had dried up and he could see the dead things on the sea floor and the edge of the chalk cliffs, the dead laurel and linden trees a sickly chartreuse color. He closed his eyes and when he spoke his voice resonated through Nicki's entire world as if it were a single smooth surface for transmitting Armand's words. Small things crumbled into powder. 

“Hearken unto my voice, Nicolas Jean-Marie Sebastien Louis de Lenfent. You have pleased me for now and I am done with you. You will leave my service and return the masquerade of your former life until I call for you again. Do you understand?"

Armand whirled, sending a shift in the air, and realized Nicolas' projection of self was absent. But there was something in the air touching him and a strong wind suddenly passed through his hair. 

"Nicolas?" He questioned cautiously. 

His only answer was another shift of ice cold wind. He shivered. A wet feeling at his hand. He looked down but there was nothing and no one there. Then he realized this was what had happened to Nicolas' sense of self when Armand worked to break him, and he smiled and reached out for where he thought Nicolas' head might be. He only met with the same empty air.

"Nicolas, show yourself right now. I command it." He tried to shove him, but only stumbled in his over calculation, barely managing to catch himself from an inglorious tumble. Then suddenly, it felt like his entire body and being was surrounded and permeated by the same capturing cloying warmth and tightness Armand felt as he was slowly growing soft inside Nicolas' wrecked passage. It suffused his nostrils and mouth and he thought he would choke with it, but it was only the intimacy of Nicolas' essence, incorporeal and dissipated and still so distinct in its fiery sweetness that he moaned, caught off guard as he was soaked in the fledgling in a way he could never have done outside of their minds.

He was hovering on mid-air and in a moment of panic he realized he was being efficiently disrobed, each garment simultaneously disengaging itself from his body. He was naked and dizzy with arousal and the sudden sucking at his cock made him cry out in surprise. He sank his teeth into his knuckles to keep himself from moaning, but he could not stop the little gasps from escaping him as he was stroked and ministered from inside and out. Every inch of him felt attentively massaged and pleasured and he had not felt like this in centuries, not since--a sob spilled over and suddenly all sensation stopped, and he had the feeling of uncertainty, of fear, surrounding him. He opened his eyes and smiled. 

"Even here, and after all this, you are still my gentle gentleman?" he asked, for he loved to see Nicolas perform, both on stage and in society, and it sent a thrill through him on nights when they went out and Nicolas behaved sane and if not reasonable, a little more like his mortal self, as if he had forgotten what had happened to him. Perhaps he had, for those precious few hours. He always seemed so surprised when Armand urged them home from the sun. It made his cries and screams all the sweeter, for it was as if he was being shattered anew every night.

He sighed as tentative flutters began again over his skin, and he nodded, cooing his approval in a way he never would have allowed himself outside of this privacy. Gentle feathers coaxed his passage open and he froze, shuddering, and the touches stopped again, but he shook his head and then nodded, bidding his invisible lover, like some kind of djinn, to continue. It had been too long. It had been so long but like this, Armand felt safe somehow. It wasn't as if anything Nicolas said in anger was ever believed, and when he was lucid he would not have revealed this most intimate of vulnerabilities. Only certain experiences would have produced this sort of reaction in the coven master, he knew, and he had no intention of making Armand relive them. 

A tender pulsing suction found his prostate and he gave a shuddering groan, his body twisting and arching in midair. It had been too too long, and he felt as if he was going to shatter. Another hot suction came around his cock and he almost climaxed right then. His passage stretched a little and he whimpered, then moaned as it became pleasurable, and felt the gentle but firm pressure of warmth around all his limbs, massaging and pulsing and making his nerves spark with sensation. He felt so completely loved and cared for, so absolutely safe that he allowed his guard down and threw his head back, moaning openly as he let his invisible lover and pet slowly make love to him. And this was making love, surely and without mistake, and Armand's heart could barely stand it.

There was sunlight and laughter and love and the sound of water and life. There was belonging and safety and the thrill of being young and learning. There was the smell of paint and incense and the taste of golden honey and good wine. Of straining to wait for the Master, Armand's Maestro, and the betrayal of the poisoned blade. 

Something in Armand panicked. Nicolas knew. He knew about these things somehow, when he had not read Armand and still could not even here. How? Was it just an educated guess? The safe feeling left him, and the raw pleasure overtook it, his fear temporarily forgotten as his entire body throbbed and writhed, becoming one whole single receptacle for ecstasy. He cried out again, orgasming with thick ropes of white, for in here they could be anything, and Nicolas' ministrations made him feel alive. His mind shattered and put itself back together in a controlled miniature explosion, and he sobbed in gratitude as he came down from the high, cradled and gently rocked still. He thought he felt anxiousness. Nicolas was worried for him. God, what had he done to this boy? What had he done for the sake of his own whim and safety and grief?

"Nicki," he snuffled, rubbing the tears from his eyes. "I want to see you."

A sadness. It was subdued and Armand felt like weeping. 

"Please-" he began, and lifted his hand to his lips to stop himself. Something parted them, slipping inside, and he felt himself cradled in mid-air. There was a faint stirring, bits of color and music covering in front of Armand, around him, trying to form a shape. Something like a man made out of air and notes: was holding him and it leaned in and Armand panicked, throwing up a shield and knocking him away. Nicolas burst into a million pieces, the glittering motes drifting down around him, tickling his eyelashes, his cheeks, his hair. He spun, wanting to apologize, wanting to not have startled him, wanting Nicki back. 

"Nicki! Nicki?" He pleaded. "Come back to me. Come back." But he felt chaos, hurt, and fear, sour and ugly and it made Armand feel like the dead ocean floor and the giant skeletons it harbored. He called a few more times, walking around immersed in the scattered chaotic cloud that was Nicolas, made of soft glittering light and velvet. But enough was enough and he grew impatient. With his fists at his sides he commanded, "Nicolas. Gather yourself together. You will obey me." But the cloud grew even more agitated and he waved it out of his face. Then he smiled, soft and insidious, and it widened as he felt Nicolas trace his lips in wonder. 

"Victoire," he said in a low, venomous tone, pleased when the motes frenzied so much it seemed like a buzzing hive of wasps. “So I have your attention. Victoire Langdac is not someone I imagined would have caught your eye, but once I tasted her I understood.” The buzzing grew louder and the cloud became denser and angrier, and Armand smiled, pleased that he had focused Nicolas so easily. The fledgling had no idea how to control his emotions or even hide his thoughts. “There is something so delightful about newborn vampire blood. But it’s quite a shame,” Armand said, idly looking at his fingernails, barely able to see them for how densely the cloud had grown. “Once they’re drained so soon, they explode like tissue paper in the sun.”

Suddenly the air was knocked out of him and he felt a swift kick in the back of the head that signaled his exit from Nicolas’ mind. Thin finely-made fingers clamped around his neck and began to squeeze, and he tried to kick at the naked body beneath him, and clawed at the skin of those hands with his nails. The smell of blood hit the air and his vision cleared from the feeding to see Nicolas’ grief-stricken face, blood tears running down his cheeks as he tried to strangle Armand in his rage.

They grappled with each other and it was nothing like Nicolas' tortured submission just hours before. He snarled and dug his nails into Armand's throat and for a moment Armand choked, surprised by his strength though he'd been drained for days and exhausted for more. He hadn't thought Nicolas had the strength for this. The fledgling's anger seemed to hold it in spades, and his toned arms flexed as he pressed down on Armand's neck. A sudden shove at his chest knocked him against the wall, making him draw a breath and giving him time to duck the punch thrown at his head. 

It smashed through the stone behind him and he smelled Nicki's blood spilt against the fragments that rained down. Armand's nostrils flared and he caught the next blow, grinding Nicki's delicate fingers together inside his fist, making him twist in pain as he tried to escape Armand's powerful grasp. 

Armand watched him for a few seconds and finally clamped his hands around Nicki's wrists like shackles, pleased to see the fledgling melt as if Armand's hands were the only thing holding him up. In a daze Nicolas watched himself go limp, slowly sinking towards the floor in helpless submission. He blinked as if to try to clear the fog the prompting at his wrists had set, and looked up at Armand in confusion as he knelt. 

Armand released one wrist and dealt him a heavy uppercut that knocked him a good three feet backwards. He skidded across the dusty stone floor, tried getting to his feet and succeeded on one knee, then staggered and fell, his hateful glassy eyes on Armand the entire time. 

"How did you find her? What did she say to you?" Nicolas asked, and Armand suddenly heard the pain and grief creeping into his voice, and he preened to know he was the cause of it. Nicolas was kneeling on his hands and knees before him, looking not quite defeated but at least winded for now, and in so much suppressed pain Armand wanted to savor that look. 

"You are rather sick in the head aren't you, Nicolas?" Armand asked, advancing upon the violinist. He clicked his tongue, satisfied to see Nicolas rising to retaliate only to kneel instantly in a daze. 

"What have you done to me?!" Nicolas hissed in disbelief, fighting against Armand's renewed grip on his wrists. 

"Given you the simple solution of finding out exactly what and who you are. Taken away your agonizing choice. It is rather my specialty, these matters of the mind," Armand said facetiously. "Did you know Victoire was with child? Not yours, of course," he added hastily when Nicolas looked stunned. "As far as I know that remains impossible for our kind. But she had a second heartbeat inside her that deadened and demanded blood. You mean to say you could not tell when you made her? She came to the theatre looking for you but fortunately you were quite occupied with the work. She was most grateful to meet the rest of your family and would I be the godfather of her child?"

"You're LYING!" Nicolas snarled, shoving at Armand wildly, trying to reach him with his fangs, his hair flying out around him and tumbling every which way. He looked delightful and nearly mortal in his rage had it not been for his paleness, but his youth made his skin and flesh softer than any other coven member's. 

"Of course I am," Armand said breezily, yanking Nicolas to him despite his struggles and pressing him tightly along the length of his body. Nicolas was nearly a head taller but he was slightly broader, and the lack of threat he posed made his size feel safe against Armand's comparatively smaller body, immature and only just emerging from adolescence as it was. He had barely had facial hair when he was made, and the androgyny was already a belabored point. Nicolas could feel the hardness of Armand's arousal against his leg, and made a desperate sound as he tried to pull away, then to strike and claw at Armand's face. 

He was a young man when made, at the end of a process Armand had just begun when mortal, and he had lived far from home with roommates and by himself. He had been in foolish fisticuffs and pistol duels, he had gone hunting and ridden horses with the native talent of a country boy despite his breeding, and he had a hidden strength despite his slender frame. No one doubted him as a gentleman until the drink. So they made a queer sight, like two brothers fighting or two bosom friends struggling with their love for each other. 

Finally Armand lunged for Nicki's arm, biting hard enough to make the pain jolt up his nerves into his neck and the fledgling to curl backwards in shock. He withdrew with barely a mouthful and captured his shoulder, doing the same, and though Nicolas jerked once, he seemed unable to distinguish one pain from another. He was dazed, his mind trying to reel from the attack and think clearly, but it had been so long since he was afforded that opportunity. The only time he could was when he worked on the plays and the music. And Armand was trying to take more and more of his lucid moments.

Armand finally captured his open mouth, forcing his tongue forward and scraping viciously against it, drawing bloodied screams from the back of his throat and holding his lips in place with his fangs as Nicolas frantically tried to pull away. His shoves became weaker and weaker and his hands curled into weak fists against Armand's shoulders. When he was finally released he gave a broken sob, suddenly remembering why they had fought. Armand licked his bloody lips like a cat after a kill, and watched Nicolas try to put himself back together. 

The violinist was in shambles but interestingly, unlike after other attacks, his mind seemed to be clear. Perhaps the fury and the outrage helped him to focus. He stumbled to his feet, hand flat against the wall for support, and bent, wincing at Armand's bites on his arm and shoulder. 

"You can still light the pyre under Les Innocents, M'sieur," Nicolas told Armand, who had folded his arms behind his head and was observing Nicolas at his leisure. "We can tell Lestat it was an accident during a Dark Dance. Or that I jumped in. I would rather prefer the escape of that release, than the uncertain hope of anything else."

Armand shook his head and smiled a smile that did not reach his eyes. "You are mine to dispose of as I wish. You've mourning to do, so I will excuse this presumption that you have any control over your fate."

Nicolas' face became like stone, blank and bleak, and he asked very quietly, "did you scatter the ashes?"

Armand nodded. "Of course."

"Good. I would never forgive you if you didn't."

"Does that imply I am forgiven for this week?" Armand's lips quirked upwards. 

Nicolas stared at him in disbelief, then fled, stumbling but once, his fingers latching onto the doorjamb, the door slamming behind him as he sought the egress from Armand's manse. 

 

Armand had slowly and painstakingly broken Nicolas, made him his own creature, but after Nino Rochambeau and the incident with the judge, it became very clear that Nicki was rushing to ruin himself as quickly as possible, to make Armand's triumph meaningless. Armand was secretly beside himself, unable to stop his victim's decline, desperate and panicking to keep him close. 

In the parlor that evening with Eleni and Armand, Nicolas muttered to himself, full of fear and frenzy and paranoia. He couldn't stop the screaming in his mind and the two mortals were much too loud. Even Armand's music and Italian irritated him when usually it made his insults and violence easier to bear. Knowing what had been stripped from him gave him a strange half-awareness of his own self-mortification and he plunged on, vaguely certain but determined above all to flout Armand at every turn.

//“But it's YOU in my head!" Nicolas growled. "He is...you are enormous in the sphere of my thoughts. We had a deal! You would show me the justice of this underbelly, where everything makes sense in the Darkness! You would give me order!"

"And what would you give him?" Eleni asked, before Armand could stop her.

"Everything else. What more would I need?" Nicolas asked, scoffing at the idea. "My soul pledged and my body given up unto...ah, what was it? You remember, you came up with such words for me to repeat after you. They sounded of the Old Ways, the old rites of the witches place, and I knew it was true, for the first time there was a truth and a sense to things."

"Sense?! You are an insane fledgling, with no idea of his limits or the discretion necessary to keep our existence secret," Armand pronounced heatedly. "You'll find neither quarter nor allies from the rest of the coven if you continue in this vein. All you are doing is alienating yourself as you did as a mortal man."

"Why would I need them if I have you?" Nicolas asked, frowning. "Isn't that what you said? You were so patient to explain...but I see you've forgotten, that is forgivable, we can forget all this, just, I can remind you of your promise, this all went twisted, that's all, we got away from ourselves..." He fiddled his fingers nervously against his chin and looked to the side in thought, not heeding Armand's rising anger nor Eleni's growing concern.//

"Nicki, please, let us help you. We can take you back to the theatre, and you'll feel better in your coffin--"

"No!" Nicolas screamed at her, fists tight and eyes wide in horror. She was sure the neighbors would awaken. "No! Never the box--"

"Oh for heaven's sake," Armand muttered with a roll of his eyes. 

"I'm yours! I'm yours I'm yours I'm yours," Nicolas babbled helplessly, falling to his knees in front of Armand. Eleni was baffled as to what he was trying to do until he nosed Armand's crotch like an animal trying to gain favor. She couldn't suppress her gasp, and Armand broke out of his intent stare at the fledgling's actions, writhing at his feet, to yank him up by his hair and deliver a punishing blow to his face. 

It was enough to daze Nicolas, and he blinked and went limp, his eyes dull as he permitted Armand to drag him away from the mortals. She followed him and with great hesitation, opened the door to the closet that held the traveling trunk. Armand said nothing but eyed her with annoyance, then lifted Nicolas and tried to stuff him into the trunk just in time for him to rouse himself. 

"NO!" came the bloodcurdling scream that issued forth from the fledgling's throat. Eleni heard it in her mind too, full of terror and pain, frenzied in desperation. "NO!!!"

But Armand was implacable, ignoring Nicki's desperate scrabbling as he shoved the struggling sobbing violinist into the trunk. He grabbed Nicki's flailing wrists and was pleased to see the fledgling sag, then shoved the rest of him in, slamming the lid on top and latching the clasp. The trunk rocked and dented with the force of Nicki's blows and struggles, and Armand sat on it placidly as it bounced up and down, watching Eleni's every reaction. 

The brass corners of the trunk were gouging the fine hardwood floor as Nicolas fought and shoved to escape the nightmare, and Armand tsked at them lightly. Eleni realized she had backed into the wall in fear, for she had no idea how to calm or help or stop Nicolas, but she knew even less how to stop Armand. The coven master knew everything now, had seen the locks on the inside of the trunk. He hated it when the others tried to keep Nicki away from him. Eleni knew better than most that Nicki was just his type, an innocent artist for him to debauch and ruin and discard. 

She had seen it before even back in Les Innocents. It was a wonder Laurent had survived, but she had not been surprised when he shed no tears for his maker when Armand had cast her into the fire during the purge, nor when Laurent retained the slavish devotion Armand inspired. He made sure he was the one to release Laurent and help him from his ritual entombment, not his own maker as was her right. The poor woman, not knowing what to do with this boy she loved, frightened into inflicting the painful rituals that made her fledgling disregard her without even the intimacy of hate, whilst Armand could step in as the saintly master, savior and superior. Oh yes, Armand was an expert at brainwashing. She could not understand what he was aiming for with Nicolas, but then, Nicolas seemed just as intent on ruining himself. 

Finally the box gave a final shudder as the screaming stopped, but the whispering began, hoarse and pleading, and Armand quirked an eyebrow of amusement. Eleni wanted to strike him. 

"Let us take him back," Armand said, lifting the trunk easily. Eleni had had wheels installed even, for comfort, and he rolled the box with Nicki's fears easily out of the flat. "Would you please dispose of the judge and his wife? Whether they survive or not, just make sure they do not remember us."

Without even a backwards glance, he left with Nicki caged in his own trunk. Eleni looked down at the two mortals. They were fast asleep, but breathing steadily. There was no point in killing them if she could pluck out the memories. A very young man disheveled looking like he'd just been attacked, asking for help at the door. The housekeeper letting him in and the wife taking pity, wiping his face with a warm cloth without even changing from her nightclothes, for the petitioner was just a boy, really, just newly a man, like so many idealistic students in Paris, thinking they could bring the new sunrise when many had barely seen the full scope of the humanity they fought for. 

The boy was inconsolable and asked the judge all manner of legal questions and it was apparent he was intelligent, perhaps went to the Sorbonne, yes, well they'd take care of their own, the judge was loyal and a man of honor, and he removed his banyan and changed into his robes of office. And then they had left at once and the wife was stubborn and when they quarreled it had all gone wrong, and the boy was a monster and everything was blood and none of it made sense. 

"I'm sorry," Eleni whispered, and bent down. By the time she returned from settling them in their beds, their house empty even of servants, dawn was approaching. A visit would not be possible, and she let herself into her own tidy little townhouse before quickly going down into the cellar and past a hidden door that kept her coffin in place. 

It took three nights for Nicolas to stop screaming and struggling to escape every time he woke in the box, and by the end of it he had wept himself into a frenzy and gone nearly comatose with terror, lost in unseen horrors none of the coven could imagine but for the four responsible for his first torturous nightmares as a mortal. Others had begun to mutter in discontent at this treatment, and Eleni heard some of her dancers whispering about what punishments the old Roman coven had practiced, some worse than even the Catherine wheel. Armand was given a wide berth when before he was merely treated with reverence. It was a relief to everyone when the box finally gave no stir when the sun went down one evening.

When Eleni opened the box, quiet and still at last, she had to help Nicolas out of it, holding onto his hand as he dully obeyed her instructions. He was trembling so much he presented the illusion of being still, and with the other three founders present, they tied him to his chair.

“We need a new play,” Armand said, when he saw what they had done. His face was unreadable and Nicolas’ eyes were dully gazing at the polished cherry surface of his writing desk. He was slumped forward in his seat, clothes still bloody and stained, his shirt collar unbuttoned and loose, revealing the pale bruised expanse of neck, mottled with blue where fingers had squeezed. His hands were twitching increasingly and his ankles had begun to twist against their bonds where they were tied to the chair legs. He would not be quiet or still for much longer. Already his shallow pants were quickening in pace.

“And what is it that you propose? He is in no state—“ Felix began to protest, and Armand shot him an irritated glare, shutting him up. The blond giant pressed his lips together and to everyone’s surprise, forged on. “He needs rest and a surcease of his terrors. It does him no good, to be here with us! He needs time in the country!”

“You would sacrifice the security of all the vampires here, a dozen immortals, for the sake of a mad boy who should have been destroyed along with his maker?” Armand demanded, and Felix took a step back in alarm.

“Lestat is our benefactor,” Eugenie said softly, and too late Eleni spotted the twitch in Nicki’s expression, his head flicking upwards to stare before him. “He gave us the theatre.”

“Yes, and so conveniently washed his hands of the entire mess he created, including this one! We are as much responsible to him as we are bound and shackled to him and his so-called genius,” Armand added scornfully. Eleni had never seen him so…honest. It was, truthfully, refreshing, and she wondered what had brought this on. Had she heard too much in Nicki’s flat that night for him to dissemble before them anymore? Or had Nicolas finally gotten to Armand enough that he actually made the demon more human?

“The lord giveth and the lord taketh away,” Nicolas whispered. “The lord giveth and the lord taketh away and taketh and taketh and taketh and taketh!” Pink spittle had begun to froth from his lips as he repeated himself, his voice growing louder and louder. “…and taketh and taketh…” Armand gazed down at him in distaste. He had absolutely failed. Yes, he could subdue Nicolas with just his wrists and a click of his tongue. But not when he was like this. He clicked his tongue just to test, and Nicolas took hardly a breath before he began to scream, “—and taketh and taketh and taketh and taketh and the box holds and still the lord taketh! AND TAKETH AND TAKETH AND TAKETH—“ Armand dealt him a blow so hard that he smacked his forehead against the surface of the desk, dazing him and breaking his nose. His eyelids drooped and Eleni went to him with a glare at the coven master, and placed her hands beneath his chin to lift his face.

“Who-Leni?” Nicolas murmured, meeting her eyes as she filled his view. “Don't I know you? Ellie, Len, Leni, Elle, Eleni?”

“Yes, Nicki, it’s Eleni,” she confirmed with a nod, gratified when he sighed in relief. He sagged, the tension draining from his limbs where he sat. “We are keeping you safe with rope. You’re in your chair. Do you remember what’s happened?”

“I, i,” Nicolas made a desperate keening noise in the back of his throat, grimacing as he squeezed his eyes shut. The pressure in his head was rising and his heart felt choked, his breath coming in pants, and Eleni patted his cheeks, breaking him from his attempt. "It'll pop, it's a bubble and it's too, too strong! I can't! The shine and the fire! The fife in the fields, the fields, they're so sharp! Lyres and horns and and he took, he takes--"

“It’s all right, that’s all right, mon petit. You do not have to remember. But we need a new play and your hands are not listening to you tonight,” Eleni said, interrupting him, fearful of the conversation devolving into his raving, stroking his hair soothingly and caressing his face with her cool hands. He looked down and tried to grasp the quill, but his hands shook so badly that the bottom half of the page was entirely soaked and haphazardly blotted with black ink. His lips twisted in a pained grimace and he tried to grasp it with his other hand, only to find that tied down as well. Eleni stilled them, placing a hand over his fingers and drawing the quill and ruined sheet away. She tried again, and asked this time, “Will you allow us to be your scribes?”

“The, the play,” he stammered, gaze unfocusing as if listening to something for something. “Can’t, it’s, it’s there. Eleni. Eleni. I’m so tired!”

“I know, Nicki, I am sorry, truly. But we need you so much and we do not have your brilliant darkness,” Eleni replied, and took the quill and paper, and knelt beside him. “I am ready, maestro. You may dictate to me. Do you understand?”

Nicolas panted as he stared into space, and gently Eleni wiped the blood sweat off his face so he looked like an oddly twitching statue. There was nothing to hint that he remembered his instructions, and for the longest time the five of them stood there watching him tremble, his limbs tense and his wrists wearing themselves raw as they twisted against the rough rope. Eleni reminded herself to install leather next time, and recoiled in horror at the thought of a next time. 

There were figures and there was snow and they were on a journey but the snow blew and he took a breath to fly over the snowdrifts against the trees and the flutes drifted away into the wind as he bent his knees and let his shoulders bear the birds. Nicolas shivered, the ice going through him though the climb was hard going and he felt the pressure coming down on him and he couldn't articulate the feeling, dense inside him in his spine, in his back, in his limbs, weighing down his very neck, and he tried to grip his head but serpents clawed at his wrists and he slammed his face down against the smooth volcanic rock and the birds. He could feel the violin bow taut against his back like a hunting bow, the wood hard against his shoulder blades, and he muttered to himself that the climb was not so bad, as if a lie said often enough would become true.

“Nicki!” A voice called over the wind and he looked up, squinting. “Act One! Scene One! Please, Nicolas!”

He spotted the mountaineer climbing the icy crags with naught but a single golden rope, glowing as if blessed by the gods. It looked like Laurent, young and debonair, and he was thinking of his beloved, who charged him with the duty to bring him a flower of red, white, and blue. He sighed in longing. “The mountaineer is a lovestruck fool,” Nicolas muttered, eyes narrowing, and he thought he saw Eleni’s face before him, frowning as she looked down at a piece of paper. The trees creaked in the wind and it sounded more like a quill scratching on a sheet of parchment, and he suddenly laughed to himself. There were werewolves living on top of the mountain and they would soon come to claim their prey!

But then the true snake came and Nicolas began to gasp for breath, trying to squirm and break its hold. The lion yanked his hair back when he tilted forward to crush his head against the desk and he heaved, trying to lift his entire body with the chair. And they came. The wolves came and they held him down again and the snake knocked his head aside and it dislodged something that made a scream erupt from his throat, dry and he was falling into the sea and there was nothing he could do anymore, nothing, he would have to love it while they laughed at him, lie to himself and say it was where he wanted to be. No one was coming for him and they pretended that wasn’t true, pretended he had a choice, was one of them, belonged. That was almost worse, to think he had disappointed even their false hopes. 

He shook his head frantically and felt a vise clamp around him, and he struggled to open his eyes and open them and open them and still he couldn’t move. The world shook. He stumbled. He stumbled. “Nothing, nothing. There is no one coming!” he screamed in defiance, wanting them to know that he knew, not wanting them to know that he knew. They knew enough of him, inside and out, had felt all of him come to pieces and taken him apart from the inside. “Ma soeur,” he wept, for she had been there too, clawing at his walls and thoughts until everything fell away and he could no longer avoid the awful awful truth of the emptiness of his worthless soul. That beach would go on forever and he finally had no sand left to build his fantasies. Just endless rocky shore and a bird whose cry sang and rang up and up forever into a starless, moonless sky. Everything black. He hadn’t known everything could come in so many shades of black, so many sucking deep darknesses, each with their own face.

“Let me go,” he sobbed. “Let me go.” They were squeezing his arms, and he felt like his nails were breaking off as he struggled and fought against their hold. Someone was shouting but it was as if he was hearing it under water and he couldn’t understand what he was seeing, a candle, faces, and he remembered the smell of the crypts and something inside him sprang loose suddenly, banging against the bonds and making his entire body jump and lift the chair legs off the floor. 

“Stop. Stop. Leave me alone!” But he was lost, they were here forever and he was here forever, and he had asked for this, he had asked and begged and now he would go down endlessly, just like he wanted, and no one was coming for him! And like everything else he failed at this, he hadn’t known how deep it could go, how terrible and ceaseless the rapine slaughter of his being and his soul. How easily he could be lost within the swirling chaos of nothingness in his mind, choking him from any meaning. 

“It’s so empty in here,” he finally sobbed. “You’re killing me, don’t you see, you’re killing me.” He didn’t want to beg. He didn’t. But everything was a blur and he couldn’t hear or see or understand what his eyes were seeing, what his hands were doing. The sobs rose and bubbled up out of him uncontrollably, and he took huge gulps of air, wanting to stop, wanting to stop everything and sit down but he was already sitting down, and nothing was working! His skin hurt and he felt crucified with pain and sorrow and the sick taste of fear. 

Eleni was beside herself with pity and distress at Nicki’s cries. There was little more they could do than hold him down as he thrashed against his bonds. And it had been so sudden. One minute he had been haltingly dictating the play in that vague, intermittent way, the words tumbling out from his lips in fits and starts as if obliquely describing an experience that was his own yet not, and the next he had begun to panic and squirm, panting and struggling against the ropes that chafed and held him.

The things Nicki said…Eleni had known he was in pain. But she had not imagined the brand of it, when it should have been obvious. Their mortal victim, trapped in a cage done up like a theatre, giving orders to those who had raped and ruined him when in reality he was no more their master and director than they were his assistants and servants. And they were still plundering him, even now, for while no one took his blood as far as she could tell, they siphoned every fresh and creative thought from his feverish mind. Nicolas was right. They were killing him. Slowly.

At that, Armand shoved everyone else away, Felix and Laurent and Eugenie and even her, and with a click of his tongue, shoved Nicki’s face against his chest, holding him tightly. His blank expression gave away nothing, but his protective gesture made Nicki’s back stiffen, then slump. The violinist whimpered, the sobs being torn out of him violently as Armand held him still and steadied him while he wept.

“That’s enough for tonight,” Armand said for the very first time. Never had he ended Nicolas’ productivity early. In fact, he was usually the one to force Nicolas when he didn’t feel like writing or was using it to rebel. “We’ll try again tomorrow. It can wait another night. You are all dismissed. Leave us.”

“Thank you, oh thank you, Master,” Nicolas mumbled against his chest, making Eleni look back in alarm. She was the only one who had heard, as the last one to shut the door behind her, but she heard it nevertheless. How had none of them noticed? How had she not noticed until now? Nicolas was so irreverent towards the coven master, but if Armand ever gave an order, Nicolas seldom actually disobeyed. Wringing her hands, she pondered when she might convene a meeting with the other three, to discuss the troubling issue of Armand’s hold over Nicolas. But as she heard Nicki’s sobs fade from the other side of the door, she wondered if perhaps having an absolute hold over even Nicki’s uncontrollable moods was a necessary evil here.

Nicolas was hardly better the following night. Armand had untied him and placed him in his coffin, and presumably had left for his own sleeping place, for he was not there when Eleni knocked and entered Nicki’s tidy room. It was strange how someone so wild and almost feral at times could be so gentlemanly and gentle, so tidy and neat. She slid aside the lid to his coffin and waited for him to awaken. His wrists were still raw and red, but at least they were no longer bleeding. His shirt was thankfully unstained, but Armand had not bothered to re-button it, for the collar had fallen and exposed Nicki’s shoulders, making him look oddly vulnerable, and so young that Eleni felt uncomfortable watching him so closely. She looked away, wondering if her idea for the evening was wise. It would depend on how Nicki was when he awoke.

His eyes opened slowly, and he blinked at the ceiling for a while without noticing her even though she sat right beside his coffin. She cleared her throat, and he jumped, startled, looking towards her but not quite landing his gaze upon her face. He seemed to overshoot, and be hearing for something as he looked past her left ear and shook his head when she began to speak.

“Ελένη,” he said in Greek, nodding again. “Και οι τοίχοι έχουν αυτιά.” The walls have ears. She put a hand on his chin and turned his face to meet her eyes. He was reading people again.

“It’s all right, Niko,” she said, knowing she probably shouldn’t answer him in kind.

“You call me your koloiòs,” he accused, frowning. Her jackdaw.

“Has anyone else heard you speaking Greek?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Why would I speak Greek to anyone else?” he asked. “λάθε βιώσας. (Láthe biṓsas.)” Live hidden. Did Nicolas understand what she meant?

“θάνατος οὐδὲν διαφέρει τοῦ ζῆν. (Thánatos oudèn diaphérei tou zên.)” Death is no different than life.

“Ah, καλλίστῃ (Kallístēi), κακὸς ἀνὴρ μακρόβιος (kakòs anḕr makróbios)!” he replied. Oh most beautiful, a bad man lives long! 

“Nai, nai,” Eleni replied, tugging him standing. “Elpis.” Hope. “Even to those who have nothing else, hope is still nearby.”

“Thales,” Nicolas attributed, impressed.

Eleni gave him a wry look, then shucked his stained shirt off him while his guard was down and tossed a new one over his head. She only had a second before he might react badly to being disrobed, and she took advantage of it by being ready with the new clothing. It was not always so. They had picked out clothing together. He had once taught her how to pick out her own clothing. It was like caring for a parent who had aged too quickly, in a way. Nicolas grumbled a little but permitted her to tie his cravat, though she knew he no longer cared about such things. So much to keep track of, he had said, and it wasn't until now that she understood what he meant, when everything inside his mind was leaking out after he had tried to keep it in for so long and under such duress. Damn Armand. Damn the old ways.

She met Nicki's questioning eyes and tapped his nose with a smile. 

"Shall we go out? I have a surprise for you," she said. "Only after you feed, and feed well!"

"A surprise?" he asked doubtfully as she took his arm and slid it through a black coat sleeve. It made him look a bit young, like a cleric or a seminarian far from taking his holy orders.

“That’s right. And you need to feed properly. No wasting time, agreed?”

He nodded, and she barely had to tell him to wipe his mouth after the second thief. They took a coach and had to convince the driver to take them towards the edges of the city, where a great traveling circus had set up camp. There were a few animal cages with cloths draped over them, and mortals of all social classes were slowly purchasing tickets and making their way into their seats.

Nicolas felt the excitement of the people around him and was surprised to see Eleni produce two tickets from her purse with a mischievous smile.

“When did you get those?” he asked, momentarily letting go of her hand. She dodged out of his reach and giggled, to his surprise, and he forgot to be unhappy, feeling like he was chasing after one of his baby sisters in a game. 

“We have special seats,” she announced as they entered the tent, but Nicolas was hardly listening to her, his eyes and ears taking in everything around him, the brightly colored decorations, the red silk of the tent, the drama of the lighting, the chatter of the mortals’ thoughts and mouths. He seemed in a trance, and she guided him to their seats in the second row to the side of the stage, and let him soak it in. Perhaps, for one night, he could forget himself and be transported to a better world, a more magical world worthy of his idealistic imagination. Perhaps he could be lost there, she hoped, or at least take refuge, no matter the horrors he faced. 

Sometimes he could sit there for hours on end, entranced by nothing more complicated than a simple blade of grass or the fall of rain on the cobbles. She reasoned it must be meditative, or at least a contemplative peace from the agony he seemed to invite.

The company was from the Far East, and they performed a delightful series of acts Eleni had never seen before. A young girl balanced spinning plates from several hands. Others demonstrated some strange dances that seemed to be part of a graceful martial art. Even the jugglers seemed more refined and sophisticated than their Western cousins, and Eleni wondered if anything about Paris surprised them, and what mysterious vampires lived in the Orient. When she was busy studying the clowns’ methods, for she was an actress and a dancer after all, she felt Nicki’s hand stiffen in hers. He had laughed and applauded with her at the acts, but now he was transfixed by the golden wire cage that descended as if by magic from the heavens.

A lute tuned to a very different scale picked out a hypnotic melody, and a beautiful young mortal, not quite a man, not quite a woman, began a series of impressive contortions. The audience gasped not only at his, or her, nakedness, for the mortal wore little more than a skin-tight tumbler’s outfit, but at the way the body seemed to be completely boneless. Eleni supposed a vampire might be able to do it, and she could ask the lithesome Juliet, but this was more than mere physicality. There was true talent, skill, and practice in it, and artistry that mere vampire mimicry would not suffice.

Slowly, the series of increasingly complicated contortions blended together until the delightful little creature contorted into what looked like an elegant crane, the shape of its body casting a beautiful shadow against the dramatic red silk of the tent. The lute suddenly stopped, and a piercing high voice broke through the silence. She heard Nicolas’ gasp swallow her own.

The voice seemed like a bell, or the thrum of a robin singing in the spring, and it plucked something in Eleni’s heart that longed to join it. The youth was singing in French, Eleni realized, and doing very well with it, the voice soaring and trilling effortlessly. No doubt a coloratura soprano, regardless of male or female, and she was not surprised by Nicki’s reaction. He seemed almost to blush in excitement, and her shoulders slumped in relief. She had managed to bring Nicolas some levity tonight, some escape from the terribleness of the last few weeks.

When the show was over, Nicolas lingered in the dark tent, then tried to go around back to find the performers. 

“We can come back, Nicki. I don’t want you to tire yourself out,” Eleni entreated, trying to tug him back home. Too much excitement and he'd be uncontrollable, perhaps even requiring another night of confinement to the chair, or worse, his coffin. God, how had she let it come to this?

“I just want a name! I just want to talk to them for a little while, or offer them tickets to the show. Don’t you want to meet the dancers? Don’t you want to meet l’oiseau?” Nicolas asked, shaking her off with surprising strength and tenaciously pursuing every stagehand he saw. They all seemed to scurry and duck away, their black queues whipping against the silk of the tents they disappeared into. “So this is how our audience feels when we close our doors!” he complained.

A door slammed shut, and a short Oriental man with a black queue, black pajamas, and the lute from the performance, scowled as he left what seemed to be a storage cart. There was an old nag tied to it who looked at him balefully before twitching the furnishings over its eyes and returning to sleep.

“You there! Can I talk to the manager please?” Nicolas called, rushing just a little too quickly to be natural to catch up with the man. The angry lute player’s eyes widened, but there was no easy exit, and he suddenly adopted a subservient posture, clasping his hands together and smiling with squinted eyes.

“Ohh, mah-suh!” He said with exaggerated vowels, butchering the French, bowing a little and wagging his head. “You have question ‘bout ticket? Ticket question at main office! No lee-funds! Sollee!”

Nicolas stared. He seemed at a loss for words, and the man looked steadily back at him as if equally uncomprehending.

“We don’t have a question about the ticket,” Eleni said slowly, uncertain of herself. “We are performers ourselves, on the Boulevard du Temple. We’d like to meet the dancers and l’oiseau. The performer in the golden cage?”

“Ohh, vellee busy! Sollee! Sollee! Must go!” The man bent almost double repeatedly and began to rush off, but Nicolas blocked his way suddenly.

“You are a man of the arts. Does it hurt to butcher the language like that?” he asked.

“Nicolas! I apologize for my friend’s rudeness, he doesn’t mean—“

“No, I mean it. I have never heard anyone with as awful an accent as that,” Nicolas said, to Eleni’s chagrin. "Even an imbecile is capable of recitation." He placed his hands on his hips and met the mortal’s quizzical look. He seemed to be taking his measure, cocking his head to one side, and slowly a smile spread upon his face.

The mortal straightened, gave a slight bow with a flourish of his hand, and shook Nicolas’ hand swiftly.

“Please accept my apologies,” he said in perfect, if only slightly English-accented French. “One does try to satisfy the audience’s expectations, and unfortunately they are low indeed for barbarians of a far off land where a man might have many wives.”

“Please accept my apologies for being so blunt,” Nicolas nodded with satisfaction. “Permit me to introduce Eleni du Louvois, principal choreographer for Renaud’s, or as it’s more casually known, the Theatre des Vampires. I am its composer and playwright, Nicolas de Lenfent.”

“M’sieur de Lenfent, Mlle du Louvois, it is my pleasure to be your humble servant, Chen Xiu-yu. Just call me Chen. I play the lute and keep the books.”

“Why, your French is perfect!” Eleni exclaimed. “Why don’t you correct them?”

“I would be a performing monkey instead, mademoiselle. In Hong Kong plenty of Chinese speak the King’s English and French besides, but this is a foreign land, where simpler minds can easily take offense at imagined airs."

“Eloquently said,” Nicolas replied with a gentleman’s smile. He was in surprisingly good form tonight. Perhaps it was the vigorous feeding. “I beg your assistance in locating the contortionist, that lovely oiseau tonight with the yellow and red plumage.”

“Ah. Well,” said Chen with a slight moue of distaste. “I’ll show you to the little treasure. But I warn you, you might be disappointed.”

They meandered through the dark grounds of the camp, passing candlelit tents and snoring doorways that had flaps tied in place. Nicolas felt oddly disconnected, his mind taking time to think through the words. There was so much here he didn’t understand, and it wasn’t just the language. Rather, everything was new and he was sinking into it, confused as to who he was, where he was, China or France, his shoes made of leather or canvas, his frock coat a robe of silk or the black coat Eleni put on him. Who was Eleni, the white-faced woman in the crowd?

He felt dizzy by the time they came to a small orange tent, decorated on the outside with small mirrors and embroidered scarlet curlicues. Chen motioned for them to pause, and then ducked his head past the tent flap. Nicolas and Eleni exchanged glances, and Nicolas edged closer, the lamps inside the tent casting a warm glow on his handsome face.

“Hey. Have you eaten yet?”

“Of course. Have you?”

“Yeah.”

“What the hell do you want, Chen? Come to call me a whore again? Want to see what’s—“

“Not now. Yu Mei-xing, this is Mademoiselle Eleni du Louvois and Monsieur Nicolas de Lenfent,” Chen said suddenly, drawing the tent flap aside and allowing the tent’s light to illuminate the two uncommonly beautiful creatures standing there with expressions of equal surprise. “They appear to be interested in you.”

The tent was filled with beautifully embroidered silk pillows and brocade, the ceiling draped in luxurious fabrics, no doubt gifts from admirers. In the center was an exquisite young androgynous mortal, draped loosely in a dark green banyan with a wide golden cuff around the neck and wrists. His mouth was like a rosebud and his cheeks slightly peach pink from the wine he was drinking. Its bottle sat on the ornate dark lacquered table beside him. Candles and lamps stood or hung everywhere, guarded with metal and water. The light shone against his black silken hair, cut unusually short to the nape of his neck. 

In an instant Nicolas and Yu’s eyes were drawn to one another, and they both gave a start at the feeling of instant attraction. Yu saw an elegant young man of equal age, with a small mouth that curled upwards in a smile and warm dark eyes that seemed to bore into his heart. His hair curled rebelliously against his shoulder, a part visible, and yet the strands seemed like threads of caramel or spun sugar, fine and rich. Yu wanted to run his hands through it, and his entire body felt like it was magnetized, throbbing with desire towards the man. He had never felt this way before.

“Please, my rudeness precedes me, please have a seat. I can offer you some tea or some wine, if you prefer?” Yu said in French, but his eyes kept Nicolas’ gaze.

“Nicolas, I’m going with Monsieur Chen to see some of the animal cages. Will you be all right here?” Eleni said, tugging on Chen’s arm meaningfully.

“Hmm? Yes, yes, enjoy yourself,” Nicolas replied absently, approaching him like a nightingale paying court to a jackdaw. He realized there was incense burning behind Yu, smoke drifting upwards and the scent wafting towards Nicolas, overwhelming him with spices and flower petals. He knelt on a pillow, feeling ungainly and awkward in this sumptuous and delicate environment. Yu smiled at him with undisguised joy and Nicolas’ head spun, suddenly feeling the lightness of running along pottery roofs and the thin thrumming of a bird’s wing in a gentle hand. He felt pinned by sensation and memory, Yu’s thoughts and being suspended and pressing against him and burrowing inside. He didn’t know what he had learned, couldn’t know, but he suddenly recognized Yu. This had happened before, and he couldn’t explain it, but he quickly stopped reflecting on it. It was happening more and more now, sometimes even in the street when he hunted, transfixing him with the onslaught of images and words and sounds and smells, of the entirety of a person striking a blow at Nicki’s mind all at once.

A slender hand darted forwards and yanked him forwards by his shirt, smashing their lips together. Yu was warm, burning like a phoenix, and Nicolas felt small like a nightingale trapped in its flames. He moaned helplessly, lost in the softness of those lips and the moist slip of tongue into his mouth, tantalizing and teasing him, whipping against his teeth and the roof of his mouth. He felt like he was drowning, and he let Yu gently tug off his frock coat, then unbind his cravat to tie it around his eyes. It made it a little better, if he couldn’t see, but he was bewildered and panting still, too much sensation all at once even as he hungered for Yu’s touch and his blood. He felt those hot mortal hands working over him, tracing the muscles in his chest and his belly, shoving the cloth at his shoulder back to lick and gnaw gently at the skin there, making him shiver.

“Oh God,” he whispered, his hands reaching out and finding Yu’s hips. He caressed them and felt the banyan fall off, and when his hand went up to take off the blindfold he found it slapped away. He grinned, then moaned when the same hand palmed his cock, straining painfully against his breeches. His hips twisted upwards and he gave a soft whine. When had he wanted someone so much? Not since—no, don’t think of him, don’t think of— “Oh!” He was bare except for his stockings, and in the cloying warmth and nutmeg spicy citrus smell of the tent, he felt his cock being enveloped in a moist and soft mouth, that clever tongue making him gasp and writhe even as those hands caught his searching hands like those of a drowning man.

“I want—I want to,” Nicolas panted, trying to reach for Yu, but the mortal dodged his caress, letting Nicolas card his fine fingers through his hair and nothing more. “You can-“ Then he groaned, bucking upwards as those lips left his cock with a soft pop, and a moistness sucked on his hole. His voice sprang into a higher pitch, then dipped low as Yu worked a finger gently in. “No, I don’t, I don’t—“ The finger froze, thinking he was in pain.

“What’s wrong? Does it hurt?” Yu asked, worried, and his voice was so beautiful Nicolas almost wept.

“I, please, I need to see you. I, someone hurt me there. Many times,” he confessed, shame in his voice and his face as he turned it to one side, afraid of what Yu would think. “But I’m clean, I swear, I swear, oh you fetching creature, please just let me see you and I won’t remember, I won’t think of that! Tell me you still want me!”

“You’re crazy,” Yu said with a soft laugh, and Nicolas’ heart sank. Yes, that was the problem, wasn’t it? Poor Mad Nicolas. Only had Armand for aid, for succor, for getting his brains fucked out and his heart broken. Useless Nicolas. "Armand's little whore, his harem boy for the century," even François had hissed it, and had been pleasantly surprised when Nicolas slumped and walked away, chastened. 

“I’m a circus performer and you think you wouldn’t be good enough for me? I didn’t want you to know about this!” Suddenly his blindfold was yanked off and Yu knelt between his legs in all his glory, a honey-skinned nymph with slender limbs. Nicolas drank in his features hungrily, those soft barely-formed breasts, the black hair at the armpits, the small navel and the hard glide of his hips, sinking towards a curious diagonal scar that ran straight above a long but narrow cock.

“You’re beautiful,” Nicolas breathed, looking him up and down again.

“I kn—what?” Yu asked, flabbergasted. “You’re, you’re not going to call me a demon and run out screaming?”

“Er, no?” Nicolas quirked an eyebrow. Was he crazy? He wasn’t certain. Nothing really made sense and all he could do was try to understand the sensations before him. “Why should I?”

“Most people ask if I’m about to be a castrati, it’s so small, but, well…” Yu blushed, making him look charming, then sat down and spread his legs slowly, making Nicolas’ cock twitch and bob in excitement. He stared, then realized what he was looking at. 

“That’s amazing,” he whispered, transfixed.

“That’s not what people usually say,” Yu replied ruefully.

"What do they usually say?" Nicolas asked, hand going up to caress his hip idly. He crawled forward to hover over Yu's crotch and smiled beguilingly, making the mortal shiver. 

"Freak. Monster. Demon," Yu muttered as if ashamed. "Ghost spirit. What kind of human has both female and male parts?"

"The kind of human with much beauty and affection to give," Nicolas whispered. "And you are so beautiful you are much more than a mere collection of organs, my dear." The endearment was uttered in English, tinted with Nicki's French accent, and it brought tears to Yu's eyes. No one had ever told him something so heartfelt. He had never exposed himself without suddenly being reduced to the question of his sex. "I've been called a demon. It's not so bad."

"We haven't even talked," Yu said, feeling foolish. "But I'm in love with you already."

"Why do you think I sought you out, my songbird?" Nicolas whispered. He hadn't felt like this since, since, no, don't think of her now, she's gone, burnt up, don't think of Armand and his searching fingers. 

"Are you quite well? You're trembling," Yu said, kissing his shoulder. Nicolas dipped his head and gave Yu's cock a long lick, pleased when it jerked in interest. "Oh!"

But Nicolas only heard his own cries echoing in his head as Armand took him, and fiercely he opened his lips and clamped around the head of Yu's cock, sucking him down to the root into his own throat and gag reflex and making Yu buck up with keening noise. He tried swallowing around it every so often just to hear the moan, making the mortal writhe and clutch at the sheets. Finally Yu shoved him away with a kick of his heel, and he lost his balance, falling backwards onto the pillows behind him. He felt softness and someone was prodding and he heard Armand and he tensed in fear and the next thing he knew Yu was pulling his hands away from his face and drawing it to his chest to cradle Nicki's head. 

"Wh, what happened?" Nicolas asked, afraid he had revealed or done something to this exquisite bird. 

"It's fine," Yu said softly, starting to rock him in a way that sent calming pulses up Nicki's spine. "You were...you were hurt recently, weren't you?"

"How did you know?" Nicolas murmured. He remembered being tossed back, his world spinning and then, and then it wasn't Yu, it was Armand come to reclaim his favorite rape victim and impale Nicolas with as many things and cocks that would convince the coven master that the violinist was his. 

"It's happened to me too," Yu murmured in a very quiet voice. "A time ago, about a decade. It was my grandfather. A lonely man. But a rotten one."

"What happened to him afterwards?" Nicolas asked.

"He runs the circus," Yu said blithely. "You think any carnival freak has a tent this nice? I'm too old for him now. He likes them young and confused, alone in the world. I'd been freshly orphaned."

Nicolas embraced him in pity and sorrow. And they held each other.

"Enough of this," Yu said, laying back. "Come use my female parts. The men I'm with rarely do."

"But you wanted--I want to be able to--"

Yu sat up and shushed him with a slow kiss, so gentle and delicate it unfurled something inside Nicolas that threatened to make him cry, made him so vulnerable. 

"Shh, this I want too," Yu said with a tender smile. He raised his eyebrows. "Do you want me to?" He gestured as if to offer that Nicolas lay back, but it reminded him too much of Armand and with a desperate fearful noise Yu recognized from the understanding look he gave the vampire, pushed Yu back and dipped his head to suck on his cock one more time before sliding his tongue around his lower lips and into the soft crevice. There was less slickness than Nicolas was used to, and he supposed it must be shared between the two organs, but he marveled at Yu's soft cries as he prepared him, sinking his tongue inside and prodding for that sweet spot few females had explored. 

Yu whispered something in Chinese, then seemed to blink and translate, "Oh Heavens, please please please, I need you inside me! Please fuck me ! Quickly! I can't wait any longer!"

Nicolas grinned, and with a stealthy slide upwards he captured Yu's mouth and sank his cock into that inviting hot little space that made the intersexed being give a choked off cry into Nicki's mouth and his hips writhe upwards. "Yess," Yu hissed, eyebrows furrowed in a mix of pleasure and distress, and he snaked his nails down Nicki's back as they rocked together, Nicolas moving his hips slowly as Yu became accustomed to his size and weight, their flesh almost molding to each other. The two of them shuddered with every thrust, mouths open against each other and not quite touching, lost in each other's mahogany brown eyes and connected in another intimate place. 

"I can't," Nicolas gasped, his thrusts speeding up and drawing small whines of pleasure from Yu as he nodded in approval. "Could you turn over? Do you like that?"

Yu answered him with a contortionist's move that made Nicki's head spin, Nicolas's cock still inside his false vagina while Yu twisted onto his hands and knees and pulsed around Nicki's cock, making him yelp. 

"Oh my God," Nicolas groaned as Yu pistoned his hips backwards to urge Nicolas to start thrusting again. 

"What the hell are you waiting for?! Fuck me hard, you French bastard," Yu said. "I can't believe I just said that." The two of them shared a soft laugh that turned into moans as Nicolas clamped his hands onto Yu's hips to angle them better and drove into his lover with a speed and determination that made Yu writhe and cry out with each thrust, his body sliding forward a little each time as he tried to gain more leverage. 

"Yes, yes, yes," he hissed, trying to stay quiet, but suddenly Nicolas wrapped those clever fingers around his cock and he moaned loudly, his hips stuttering as he came, painting the cushions beneath him with pearly white. 

"Yes, yes my darling," Nicolas said, thrusting and holding him still through the aftershocks, before speeding up, his thrusts growing less targeted and the pace erratic before he gave a soft cry, emptying himself inside his still-shivering lover. He collapsed over his back, feeling his smooth skin against his chest and peppering lazy kisses over his shoulders. They knelt like that for a little while, before Nicolas wrapped an arm around Yu's middle and tossed them onto their sides, spooning their bodies together. Their breaths came in small pants and Yu turned his head back to meet Nicki's lips in a sloppy, lazy kiss, no less intimate than before. They floated in the boneless haze of afterglow, Nicolas tracing curlicues over Yu's honeyed, sweat-slicked skin. 

"I know what you are," Yu whispered with a smile, turning and wrapping an arm around Nicki's chest. Their noses met. 

Nicolas stiffened. He was foolhardy and reckless in his desperation, but even he did not want direct exposure, not when none of them were ready. 

"What is that?" Nicolas asked slowly. He'd have to make Yu if he knew. Wouldn't he? He was still a little confused about how it happened but he'd managed it the last two times. He had been so lonely. Armand would otherwise kill Yu. He couldn't bear that. 

"You're a violinist," Yu answered with a smirk. "Musicians are a fickle bunch."

"What?" Nicolas replied, too flabbergasted to play along. 

"You'll leave me for some painter or your latest muse. How could a poor contortionist compare?" Yu mock-lamented, getting up and dipping a towel into a washbasin. Nicolas' gaze swept over his back and buttocks and calves, watching the water drip down. It was such a lithe body, though thin. Yu came over with the washcloth, washing the taste of himself from Nicki's lips, gently wetting and toweling off the contours of his gently toned limbs, that of a young man who might have missed a few meals but had a few bar fights a week where he could stand his own. 

"Do you live here?" Nicolas breathed when he could. Yu had kissed him breathless to distract him from cleaning the parts that Armand had laid claim to, for Nicolas ironically could not forget them now that his passions were momentarily satisfied. 

"Yes, of course," Yu said, surprised. There was hope there, a better life, a new one, no uncle, no freak show, just a young man in a foreign country, a curiosity but only because of his face. There was fear too, of insane violinists, jealous lovers, death, consumption, filth, starvation. But Nicolas saw Yu's eyes sweep over the cut and make of his silk and brocade clothes and his fears abate. 

"If I, if I gifted you. A townhouse. Would you-?" Nicolas asked hesitantly, feeling like a shy boy courting for the first time. (Isabelle LeClerc. 11. Market Fair Day.) "Not like a kept-, I wouldn't want anything! It wouldn't, not charity or anything your name would be on the deed!"

"Along with yours?" Yu asked, surprisingly sharp, and Nicolas shook his head and looked afraid suddenly. "And where are you going to get a townhouse from?" Fear ghosted across his face. He was suddenly angry. "You barely know me! What if I'm a drunk, or, or I turn it into a brothel-"

"Then it'll be your brothel with your name on the deed," Nicolas said firmly, by now having made up his mind. Anger he could deal with and accept. Anger was easy for him to weather, blows for him to suffer. The uncertainty and anticipation of abandonment and disgust always threatened to drive him out of his mind. Better ruin than vainly hoped for glory.

"You're crazy," Yu gasped, and Nicolas nodded fervently. "Why should I believe you?"

"I, do you have a piece of paper? And a quill?" Nicolas asked. 

"What do you need it for?"

"Just, let me write down my address. You can visit me. I'm not often home, usually it's well after midnight, and I leave after dawn. But come and visit. Anytime. Surprise me. It's not a trick."

"Here."

"Thanks."

"Why don't I just come see you at the theatre where I know you'll be--"

"NO!" Nicolas cried, dropping the quill and paper and gripping Yu's arms harshly. "No! They must not know about you! They, you cannot trust them. Only Eleni, the woman who came with me. Only her!" His voice dipped into a whisper. "The same way you cannot trust the ringmaster of this circus. I would not have them know of us. I would spare you that."

"Why don't you leave, if you can just give out townhouses like that?" Yu asked, horrified. He picked up the fallen paper and quill and handed them back to Nicolas. The violinist gritted his teeth and when he wrote, his hands shook. "Are you well?"

"No. I can't, I can't leave," Nicolas said in a choking voice as he shook his head. "Please don't ask me why. I just, I don't know how. I don't think I could survive. They'd find me and bring me back. They have before. Here."

"Even Eleni?" Yu took the paper and pocketed it carefully as he shrugged on the banyan once more. Nicolas nodded. 

"She cares for me, truly. Perhaps the only one who does. But she cannot fight an entire co-, an entire, all of them. I would spare her the guilt of trying," Nicolas replied bitterly. "She is the only friend I have anymore, there."

"What of your other friends? Outside the theatre?"

"They do not understand. They cannot imagine what is done to me. And I cannot go home either. I do not have a home any longer," Nicolas said, but his eyes were unfocused and he reminded Yu of his addled great-aunt, who remembered the oddest things but couldn't even feed herself. "It's all there for him to find. Even if this is all that's left when he returns. Just blood in the end, oh God, nothing but the selfish lust of a monster! I didn't know. I didn't want--I only wanted to be together. I was willing to give up everything to be with him but he did not need anyone or anything. He never has!"

"M. de Lenfent..." Yu ventured, and at first Nicolas hadn't heard him, it seemed, but his head swiveled slowly like a ghost and his pupils were wide and blown out and he looked hungry. "Monsieur!"

"Wha-" Nicolas seemed to break out of his trance, his eyes back to normal. "Please, call me Nicolas."

"It sounds more and more like slavery," Yu told him frankly.

"Call it whatever you like," Nicolas replied bitterly. 

"Nicki?" A voice called through the tent flap. It was Eleni. 

Nicolas turned his head, startled, and Yu grabbed a pillow and quickly covered Nicki's lap with it. They looked like two rare and debauched youths, lips swollen red and flushed, skin slick and shining. 

"Oh! My pardons," Eleni said, withdrawing from the tent as immediately as she had stepped inside. "Nicki, can we continue another time? We must return to the theatre."

"Don't go. Stay with me the night. We can have breakfast in the morning and talk about this idea of yours," Yu urged softly, but Nicolas was rising, tugging on his shirt. He paused to caress his lover's cheek and smiled, sad and soft. 

"Nicolas!" Eleni called through the tent flap. Nicki raised his eyebrows at Yu as if this was explanation enough why a grown man should obey a female coworker's pestering and be unable to choose for himself. 

"Visit me. Do not find me at the theatre," he cautioned in a whisper, slipping on his shoes after his breeches. He looked disheveled, his shirt untucked without his cravat, and Yu passed it up to him as he shrugged on the frock coat and the hat. They shared a kiss and a giggle, Yu tugging on his hair, and Nicolas was gone as suddenly as he came. 

"He is charming," Eleni remarked as they walked. She inspected him side along, noting the wrinkles and his deshabille. 

"Ever does love strike at first sight. I want him, Eleni. But the way a vampire wants a pet! How can I feel this way?" Nicolas took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair in frustration. The streets were empty enough that they had to walk several blocks before they could locate a cab. 

"You are dazzled by his beauty, no doubt of his soul and his youth," Eleni surmised. "All too soon we realize we are removed from the ken and cycle of mortal life and years. It becomes easier and easier to feel like an observer."

"But this is my time! I'm not Armand!"

"When were you born, Nicki?"

"1760. I would have been twenty-six this year! Even frozen at twenty-"

"And still unmarried."

"I would have been with...with," Nicolas spluttered, choked, faltered. 

"Do you really think so?" Eleni asked, intrigued. 

"I don't know," Nicolas lied. He would have done anything for Lestat. He ran his hands through his hair and chewed on a corner of his hat absently. Eleni batted it out of his mouth and snatched it away before he could do more damage. He rubbed the back of his neck and jerked backwards to look at an unseen sound. 

"Come along," she decided, looping her arm through his once more, only she was now nearly dragging him along. He did not so much as resist as fail to pay attention, and he stumbled along, eyes unfocused as he let the world pour into his mind. 

"Nicki, please pay attention," Eleni chided, sounding exasperated. They stopped at a side street before they reached the main boulevard and she patted his cheek to get his attention. It took her several tries before he jerked away, startled and clutching at his sleeves as if ants crawled over his arms. He scratched at his wrists absently as his eyes sought out and tried to focus on her face the way a drunkard tries to find a straight path. 

"Eleni!" he exclaimed. "How did we end up here?"

"We took a coach," Eleni explained patiently. "Are you suitable for appearing at the theatre? Armand is here tonight."

"So?" Nicolas retorted. "What affair is it of mine? He can come after me if he must. I'll stay before you all before he manages it," he added stubbornly. "I'm not directing tonight. I need to visit the bank. And Roget."

She clamped her hand down around his wrist like iron as he began to move away. Surprised, he looked down at her hand on his wrist.

"Leni, wh-let go-"

"Absolutely not! Not if you are just going to go terrorize that poor man again. You don't even know what you want!"

"I want management of my assets to be given to another reputable agent. I want to know my roi numbers. I want him to come BACK!" The last came out in an unearthly roar that surprise them both with how wild and guttural it sounded. He shook her off and lurched down the street, stumbling and drifting towards the walls of random buildings. It was late enough that the streets were quite empty. 

"Curses," Eleni muttered under her breath, picking up her skirts and chasing after him. Nicolas was not permitted anywhere near Roget, not after that disastrous encounter for the deed. She either had to stop him or be his chaperone, and after what he had done to the judge, he could not be trusted without one. 

But Nicolas knew the city far better than she did even lurching amiably back and forth like a drunkard, so when she arrived at the respectable establishment of M. Roget she found the candles lit in the office and, much to her great surprise, not the local constabulary called as she had expected in violation of his restraining order, but two gentlemen discussing the transfer of gold and silver and a property in the Marais off Rue de Turenne, kept by the widow Christine Robin. Roget nodded gravely and took notes, then passed a paper with figures to one of the visitors. 

"Not the tableau you were expecting?" A voice asked behind her. She turned and saw Nicolas with his hands in the pockets of his frock coat, looking for all the world like a subdued young student. The fit seemed to have passed. 

"You found an intermediary," she realized. 

"Messrs. Georges Signol and Louis Montezin, to be exact," Nicolas clarified, walking up to her to watch through the window. "They were two years older than us at the Sorbonne. A simple matter to explain a delirious fever that came and went, no chance to explain to Roget. Would they please be my retainers and asset managers from now on?"

"It looks like Roget is more than glad to be rid of it," Eleni remarked dryly. The man was grinning despite himself. It was unseemly.

"I don't want to die, Eleni," Nicolas said it so softly she thought she'd misheard. He was still looking at the glass. "I want him to come back because he wants me. Not because he thinks it would 'fix' me. I am willing to wait for that. My indulgences are not worth Armand's greedy threats."

"Why do you not come to us when he abuses you?" Eleni asked. Nicolas laughed under his breath and she was relieved he did not lose his temper and turn on her. Something had changed. 

"And give him more power over everyone?" Nicolas asked, and his smile was sad.

"What does he do, Nicki? Please, you do not have to be alone," Eleni said. 

The door opened and Nicolas turned to the two finely turned out gentlemen, his own clothes so rumpled in contrast, though it was difficult to see with the darkness of the night and the dimly lit streets. 

"Montezin, Signol, please allow me to introduce my cousin, Eleni du Louvois," Nicolas said quietly, sounding so deceptively sane Eleni hoped this episode would last. What was becoming more the exception? She hated to think of him as truly mad. Surely these were still simply echoes of the old trauma and the new. Who wouldn't flinch in mind and body, and with a Mind Gift as open and powerful as Nicki's, already a creature of extreme passion?

"Enchantée," the two men chorused, bowing impeccably. 

"So what news?" Nicki asked, clasping his hands together and rubbing them. He hadn't done that since the theatre first began, when he'd been eager and bursting with ideas. Then Armand, then he and Armand had begun their liaison and suddenly all he did was write and compose. No more grand dreams of the theatre, of the troupe, of what they would be in society. Armand kept Nicolas under invisible lock and key with invisible incentives that left him shaking and shuddering at shadows and touches and yet still needing the coven master so damn much. And Eleni, who had sworn to protect this broken bird, Eleni hadn't noticed it until now!

"Good news and bad news, Lenfent," Georges Signol replied. 

"Good news is we had no idea you were a bloody millionaire," Louis Montezin said. "Philippe Roget could be a Jew for how well he is doing with your accounts. You'd be a fool to pull them from his management."

"Perhaps I am a bloody fool then," Nicolas replied evenly. "What else?"

"The property on Rue le Regrattier? Co-signed. When Valois gave it to you he gave you co-ownership," Montezin said warily. "If you try to get rid of it, he needs to sign it, and vice versa."

"Whom does my stake revert to? If I die?" Nicki asked, his hands forming fists as they did whenever Lestat was mentioned. "He'd never own a gift like that by himself."

"Andre Latinus. We have no idea who he is," Signol said gravely. 

"Merde!" Nicki turned, punching the nearby brick wall of Roget's office that his fist made a dent. It came away dripping with blood and he winced, cradling it with his other hand. "Georges, you have to find out! I want it thrown back in his face, you understand? Not given to some backup!"

"Calm, calm!" Louis Montezin cautioned, withdrawing a handkerchief and catching Nicki's bleeding hand with it, though it was made of fine embroidered linen. "You're overwrought. We should have discussed this indoors anyway. Your cousin needs to be at home."

"She can take care of herself," Nicolas snarled carelessly, and was stopped by a glare from Montezin. 

"You are being childish. You only look like the years have not changed you, I hope?" He sniffed warily as he bandaged Nicki's hand, ignoring the face he made. "Or do you not want to know how the Marais purchase went?"

"Not in front of her," Nicolas hissed, drawing back his white and red-clothed hand. "But it's settled?"

"I'll come by with the details next week," Georges Signol replied with a nod. 

"Excellent. I thank you, my friends," Nicolas said, shoulders sagging in relief, and then bowed very formally. "Both for your assistance and your forgiveness."

"You would have done the same for us," Montezin waved a dismissive hand. 

"You never found out what Lestat was up to?" Signol asked casually. 

"I did. It wasn't what I thought but," Nicolas hugged himself by the elbows and Montezin wound an arm around his waist. Nicolas looked away in pain. 

"Louis," Signol warned, his eyes flickering to Eleni, who had momentarily been forgotten as a woman in the background. 

"Just a bit of comfort among friends," Montezin replied defensively, but he switched to Nicki's shoulders instead. 

"No, she knows. You can be free before her," Nicolas said, but he was looking at the cobbles, lost in his memories. 

"What does he mean?" Eleni asked as Montezin stroked and neatened Nicki's hair and whispered in his ear. 

"My business associate and I are, partners," Georges Signol struggled to say in a low voice, his hand going up to lower his hat. "Well, how do I put this? We lodge together the same way Nicolas and Lestat did."

"Lovers," Eleni whispered. 

"A confraternity of the old Greek school," Montezin supplied. "It is easier to disguise when so few women are in daily life and when one has friends of a similar disposition. Such as Nicolas."

"Nicki likes girls too, though," Signol teased, succeeding in making the corners of Nicki's lips tilt upwards. "As I had the misfortune of discovering when I thought Germaine Regnault simply liked wearing women's dresses."

"Your fault for not asking," Nicolas mumbled, and extricated himself from Louis' comforting hands. 

"She thought you were going to pray before her, Georges!" Montezin laughed. 

"That's enough," Nicolas said roughly, and he pushed himself away and out of Montezin's grasp. "Louis, Georges, I am in your debt."

"Only a joke, Nicki," Louis Montezin said lightly, but their afflicted friend put his hands up. They were shaking again, Eleni realized, and she would have to get them out of here quickly. 

"If, if I'm not stable in the future," Nicolas said, spreading his arms wide as if to gesture to all of himself. "Please remember my goodwill now. I do not intend you harm. Please remember that no matter what I am forced to do one night."

"You'll be fine, my good man," Georges told him reassuringly, trying to draw his arms down, only to find Nicolas was far stronger than he seemed. "Your assets shall be well taken care of. Your friends have always cared for you even if they do not always speak well of you. Such riches follow you to the end of your days, you may trust it."

"Trust that I would never seek to end it then!" Nicolas said suddenly, desperately grasping their hands hard enough that they winced. 

"Nicki, come away, please. It is past time for you to direct rehearsal," Eleni entreated. 

"If it's past time then I can't very well direct it, can I?" Nicki snapped, turning on her. He felt hot mortal hands at his shoulders, soft and melting and he backed away from the three of them with a shaky laugh. 

"It comes and goes. It comes and goes and comes and goes," he said, trying to stop himself. He nodded curtly to both of them, his words tumbling and falling out of his lips. "Monsieur Montezin, Monsieur Signol, I shall call upon your rooms next week for the key." His slender torso whipped around as if pulled by a wire and he gestured with a flourish to Eleni. "Let us away! Let us come and go, Leni." He meandered down the street, a lonely figure fading into the dim grey dark. 

"Thank you, for being such good friends. He's not well," Eleni said earnestly, clasping his mortal friends' hands as she accepted the parting kisses. 

"We are happy to take care of him. He has always been one of the dreamers. Someone has to watch out for them in this world," Georges told her soberly. 

"But he is so sensible," Eleni murmured. 

"You'd be too, if underneath you believed nothing and everything," Louis replied with a smile. "Go well, Mademoiselle Louvois. We shall take care of everything."

By the end of the following week the little neat and respectable townhouse had been furnished, reprinted, and appointed with a landlady who doubled as a housemaid. She was a fetching young girl only a little younger than Nicolas, though since she had reached marriageable age she was anxious about meeting potential suitors. 

Yu was beside himself when Nicolas presented him with the deed. He clutched the piece of paper to himself in tears, and could not stop peppering Nicki with hot little kisses. The vampire laughed, to his own surprise. 

"I promised, did I not? I am a man of my word as only a gentleman must be," Nicolas said, "for what are we otherwise but mindless beasts?"

"All this is mine? Not ours but only mine?" Yu asked breathlessly, spinning around in the foyer. 

"I hope you are not this jealous of all your possessions!" Nicolas laughed softly, then deposited himself on the chaise in the front sitting room, lying back languidly with invitation in his eyes. 

Yu stepped to him slowly, and knelt beside the chaise to kiss his lips tenderly. 

"I cannot kiss you enough, it seems," he murmured between kisses. They both moaned with the next one and their bodies seemed to stretch against one another. "Your lips hearken to me constantly." He demonstrated his point by kissing Nicolas again, making the vampire arch up towards him in desire. 

The mortal slid his hands over Nicki's shirt and slowly tugged the cloth at his shoulder back, revealing the white curve and kissing the skin there. He did the same with every inch he revealed, nibbling on Nicki's dusky rose nipples enough to make him give a choked off cry before Yu clamped a hand over his mouth. By the time Nicolas was naked on the chaise, they were both panting with desire, Nicolas squirming against every touch from those hot clever mortal hands.

Yu bent and even licked Nicki's hole, sinking his tongue in and delighting that he had to hold the violinist's hips down.

"Mine," Yu murmured, sinking a soft finger inside and making Nicolas arch and groan. The undercurrent of panic was there and he caressed Nicki's face, coaxing his eyes open. "Shh. Relax. I'm here. You're safe."

Caught in Yu's gaze, Nicki felt the mortal open him up more gently than he had ever experienced, as if he were re-newing that sensitive passage that Armand had abused and desecrated so, that gave Nicolas shudders and shakes and made him lose time and all sense of self. 

"Can I-?" The rest of Yu's question was in his eyes, and Nicolas nodded hesitantly, not wanting to displease. 

He hid the blood tears in his eyes as Yu thrust inside inch by inch, so gentle, and yet and yet and yet--

"Nicki! Nicki!" Someone was shouting. He couldn't get away. Who was shouting?

His arms and legs felt sore and he realized he had rolled into a ball on the chaise. Yu was staring at him in worry and he slowly unfurled himself, extricating his head from the cage of limbs he had created for protection. 

"I'll kill the one who did this to you!" Yu declared. 

"No! No! No one must ever know about you!" Nicolas pleaded. "Please, do what you will to me--" He flipped himself onto his stomach, feeling nauseous as he presented his arse, but he did not want to lose Yu.

"How could I not notice?" Yu was saying to himself. He rose, much to Nicki's dismay, and rummaged in his trunk. Nicolas covered his face as he listened to Yu rummaging in the clothes, then gasped when his lover grasped his hands and pulled them away. Standing before him was an exquisite little creature.

Delicate and with the tender simple elegance of what Nicki's Western conceptions knew of the Far East, Yu looked absolutely stunning in a woman's sapphire blue dress, small silk bows and pearl buttons picking out the details, the embroidery around the stomacher, the lace at the gloves. Instead of appearing comical Yu actually looked like a woman, and a beautiful girl at that. 

"Might we continue, sir?" Yu asked with eyes half-lidded with desire. He gave a small whine. "I'm ever so distressed. Won't you please help me? There's something, something between my legs that requires your attention." He writhed enticingly and with a groan Nicolas set upon him, taking care to unlace the corset a little before thrusting into him, the petticoats and skirt Yu still wore tickling the rest of his body as he pushed hard enough to make Yu scrabble against the rug, clothing wrinkling against the wool. 

"Yes! Yes, that's it, my heart," Yu said breathlessly. 

“You’re, I don’t, I can’t-“ Nicolas replied, thrusts growing erratic, and Yu did something only a contortionist could and suddenly Nicolas was on his back and so deep and it felt so good that his eyes rolled in his head and he forgot all about Armand and his greedy grasping hands and his fingers that left half-moons of gouges in Nicki’s skin, and though the pushing back and forth was similar, Yu actually kissed him, bent down impossibly and kissed him and Nicolas sank into that loving warmth and shivered with pleasure and shook so hard Yu held him through their aftershocks. And he almost felt safe in that cradle, just almost, and he was grateful for the darkness as he wept and Yu held him, his blood tears disappearing into the night.

When he had calmed they tried again, but Yu guided Nicolas on top of him as he thrust from below trustingly, kissing slowly every so often, stopping, shuddering, coaxing, and finally Nicolas gasped and moaned, Yu’s cock hitting that sweet spot so tenderly that he shuddered. They took their time and Nicolas was so sensitive besides that it wasn’t long before he came again, and Yu finished himself inside Nicolas as well, like a hot injection of healing fluid that could chase all of Armand’s touches away.

When he left that night he looked every bit the presentable gentleman again, thanking Yu profusely for their evening as if he hadn't good as bought his affections forever by gifting him his freedom with his own property and the allowance to keep it. Yu looked like a maiden bidding her gentleman suitor good night, stealing secret kisses out of sight of the chaperone, and they both thrilled at their secret and newfound love. 

He entered and left by the same way from then on, like a gentleman caller, and Yu was dressed like a maiden to receive him though that was not what he preferred to wear himself for the majority of his time. But every time it got a little easier to coax Nicolas open, to penetrate him without tears, to delicately dismantle him and piece him back together with love rather than the tyranny of fear. It didn't always work, not every night, and Nicolas tried to visit twice a week, but Tuesday could be so different from Thursday or Friday even. 

One week Yu was in a foul mood. His favorite petticoat was at the laundress and he was tired of wearing dresses only for Nicolas. He was a man, was he not? A man and yet more, true, but why did it take him to be a woman for a while for Nicolas to feel safe? Didn't Nicolas love him as a man?

"What's the matter with you?" Nicolas asked, puzzled. He was standing before the fire and warming his hands. The room was dark and they were alone, Yu in a satin gown and Nicolas in his usual sober black elegance, always looking a little young and boyish for what he wore. Bright dark eyes lit with a sensibility that matched his simple attire that was made of rich fabrics, his face youthful and intelligent, his figure sensuous and lithe. He looked more man of law or letters than violinist and composer of an unusual theatre group. 

"What do you expect me to do with my days, when my uncle leaves? Am I to be a kept woman?" Yu demanded from his seat by the harp. His eyes glittered with anger as they watched Nicolas. 

"You're not a woman," Nicolas said suddenly, even more puzzled as he turned to look at him. "Is that what troubles you? I told you, you owe me no debt. The house is yours. The allowance is even managed by a separate party. I won't have control over it and you can take what you have received with you if you travel anywhere."

"It doesn't matter what you intended! How could you be so stupid and not think I would feel indebted even if I wasn't legally?" Yu demanded. 

Nicolas put down his hands and turned around. His expression was hard. 

"I was once told to do the same. I'm trying to find out for myself and I have learned much," Nicolas replied. "And you're right. It's utter horseshit. But you have no right and no reason to think I treat you like a debtor or a kept woman! I ask your permission to even enter!"

"Then I revoke it!" Yu said, standing up. He flung off the wig and tore off the periwinkle dress he wore, nearly ripping the satin. He stood in the parlor feeling ridiculous in his women's undergarments that he wore only when Nicolas was due to come that night. "You can leave right now, M de Lenfent, if you truly believe what you said!"

Nicolas growled. "What have I done to deserve this? What have I given you but my love? You were in a foul mood tonight when I arrived and you're determined to create one in me too!"

"Is it working?" Yu asked with a glare. 

"Yes!" Nicolas threw up his hands in frustration, picked up his black coat, and stormed out the front door into the night. 

Afterwards Nicolas did not visit until a month later, much to his lover's annoyance and worry, and despite a letter of apology, when, shaking and bleeding, he collapsed at Yu’s doorstep and frightened a passing lamplighter into banging on the door.

"Nicolas!" he gasped, only half hopeful he was right, for the man kneeling against his door, leaving a bloody palm print just inside the door jamb, surely was not his elegant and well-formed lover, sharp and well if sloppily dressed. Not this cretin with wild hair and bleeding mouth and bloodied shirt, no waistcoat or coat to speak of, and nothing but torn breeches, not even stockings on his bloodied feet. He hoisted Nicki up underneath his armpits, despairing when the violinist twitched away but could not find the strength to leave his arms, and dragged him inside quickly so no one would see. He paid the lamplighters with a whole sou for his silence. 

He rushed quickly to the toilette and began wiping the blood off Nicki, and was surprised to see no wounds on him other than an infected raised ring around each of his wrists. One of them still had a rough dull iron manacle on it, a single ring from a chain hanging from it still and pried loose in an oval shape, and the wounds it scraped against bled on and off. Yu wrapped some old cravats around each of them, making Nicolas look like a suicide victim or a stage actor. The manacle had been welded on somehow, for it had no seams and no latches, and Yu could not get it off. 

"Who did this to you? Where are they?" Yu whispered as Nicolas blinked from where he lay on the foyer chaise, grasping weakly at Yu. The violinist shook his head, and Yu noticed his pinky and wrist on his non-manacled hand were bent oddly, as if they had been broken but healed incorrectly. Thank God it was on his right hand, but still. 

"Just hold me, please," Nicolas whispered, voice hoarse and weak. "It's, it's been so long." He closed his eyes, only to be shaken awake. 

"No, don't fall asleep," Yu protested, "what if you don't wake up?" Nicolas made a sound that was a half-sob, half-laugh. 

"What if I don't wake up?" He asked pointedly, then sighed tiredly, closing his eyes again. 

"No, no, don't talk like that!" Yu protested, and shook Nicolas awake again, and when that didn't work, gave Nicolas a light slap on the cheek, the kind one gives an infant or a child in tender affection. He did not expect the cry of pain and fearful flinch that followed, Nicolas' hands going up to shield his face as if to ward off the coming blows. He panted harshly, waiting, and when none came, it seemed his eyes cleared and he remembered where he was, and gave a grim smile. 

"It's him, isn't it? The theatre director!" Yu demanded. 

"No, Yu, don't go to the theatre!" Nicolas croaked, grabbing his elbow hard enough to make the mortal stop and wince. 

"Very well, I will respect your wishes for now, but only because I see you have need of my discretion and care," Yu replied. He adjusted his cravat and waistcoat, feeling uncomfortable and helpless. 

"You look very handsome," Nicolas whispered with a smile. He was closing his eyes briefly from time to time, as if resting or dozing while his breathing and panic calmed. 

"You still like me this way?" Yu asked anxiously, wondering. 

"Of course. You are generous enough to be affectionate towards a broken man, after all," Nicolas replied. 

"I made a mistake. I thought you preferred me as something I wasn't. I like dressing as a man. I feel more like a man. I do better as a man."

"So you have been well."

"My uncle's circus left. No more freakshow for me," Yu said. "I can live as I want, thanks to you."

"I didn't mean for you to come into my debt," Nicolas protested weakly. "I came here tonight because, because I love you." He closed his eyes in pain and his voice was thick with the same. "And I have nowhere else to go."

"Shh. Just, rest. You're safe now. Does he know about--"

"No! Non he mustn't he shouldn't I was very careful!" Nicolas almost shouted, agitated once more and trembling so hard Yu had to hold him tightly and still him by force. "I was careful," Nicolas repeated in a whisper, and Yu knew he was still in shock. "Eleni doesn't even know. So she can't betray us even by accident."

"We will be well," Yu said soothingly, and rocked Nicolas gently. "Rest in my arms. We can talk in the morning."

"No, no, I need, I need to sleep in darkness. The sun, I can't abide the sun," Nicolas babbled, and suddenly Yu was afraid to see his lover like this, his fear and pain ceaseless in how it captured him and turned his light inwards and slowly drove him mad. Had the theatre director been locking him up in the dark, making him afraid of sunlight? "Please take me down into the cellar and lock the door. I can feel, I can feel it..." His grip on Yu's arms loosened and Yu knew his beloved was exhausted from more than just his escape. 

Grabbing a few pillows, Yu gingerly made his way down the stairs and into the cellar. He made a small nest of straw against the wine bottles and laid Nicolas in it. The violinist was muttering feverishly, leaving streaks of blood everywhere as he patted blindly for something unnamed. 

"Rest. You're safe now," Yu promised. But Nicolas was inconsolable and he shoved Yu away with wildness in his eyes. 

"Promise me you won't come down here! Promise me!" He shouted, giving Yu a shake. 

"You're frightening me!" Yu cried back, trying to pry Nicki's fingers off his waistcoat, but the violinist was uncommonly strong and he did not seem to hear Yu as he stared with enormous hungry eyes and trembling lips that welled with blood every so often. He would lick them and swallow like a slavering animal and it made Yu recoil despite himself. 

"Lock the door! Don't come down until sunset! PROMISE!" He screamed in Yu's face, voice rough with a snarl, and with a shout Yu shoved him away and ran with all his might up the cellar stairs, not stopping until the door was locked between him and the creature his lover had given him a glimpse of. He panted, back to the door, then turned and tried to hear for any sounds. He could barely make out the choking sounds of someone struggling to breathe and then move, and clenched his fists in frustration. He could call for a physic. It did not seem as if Nicolas would die from his wounds, but he needed serious care and he could only get that if someone came. He was in no state to move. 

Yu left in the early evening and arrived by the time he heard snuffling around downstairs. The physic waited anxiously with a small candelabra at the top of the stairs as Yu brought a single candle down with him into the darkness of the wine cellar, where a dark figure snuffled like an animal in the straw. 

"Nicki?" Yu whispered anxiously. 

"It's you," Nicolas laughed softly, grimly, and for some reason it chilled Yu's heart. He brought the candle up higher to see his lover better, and saw the bloody, bedraggled clothes stuck with straw, Nicolas bent on the floor licking at the nearly dried blood that had dripped there overnight.

Yu drew back as Nicki raised his face and looked at him at last, mouth dripping with blood. He grinned and Yu stifled a scream. 

"Come. I can show you such flavors of sounds," Nicolas growled, staggering to his feet, stumbling and falling as he slipped and reached out with trembling fingers. The single candle cast a ghoulish shade over his face and his tongue shot out of his bloodied mouth to lick at the corners. 

"M'sieur? Do you require assistance?" The physic called, joining Yu down the stairs. He pulled up short behind him, shocked as Yu was by Nicki's appearance. 

"You brought someone here?!" Nicolas snarled suddenly. 

"He is here to help you! Nicolas, he is here to tend to your wounds," Yu entreated. 

"I am a physic, poor boy," said the mortal, approaching him slowly. "What manner of abuse have you suffered?"

"Oh attend me, doctor," Nicolas whined, reaching out, and as soon as the doctor came within arm's reach he yanked the mortal towards him, fangs fastened at his throat as he drained him heartily. Yu could not stop his screams as the blood poured down the doctor's front and stained Nicki's shirt and hands. He stood frozen to the spot, terrified at what his brain struggled to understand. 

"I feel better already!" Nicolas cackled, dropping the corpse and kicking it in the side so that it rolled up the stairs to Yu's feet, blank eyes reflecting the candles. 

"What have you--" Yu began, then scrambled backwards frantically, trying to escape up the stairs without taking his eyes off of his mad lover. "Nicki, please!"

Nicolas suddenly stopped, blinked, looked down, as if his vision were clearing, and a look of horror stole over his face as he realized what he had done. 

"Mon Dieu!" He gasped, a bloody hand covering his mouth as he looked from the corpse to Yu, who startled, brandishing the candle like a weapon. "No! No! No! Oh no, what have I done?" He tripped and fell over the corpse, and gasped, scrambling over the stairs like an insect trying to get away from the dead thing.

"Whom am I addressing?" Yu asked shakily. 

"Nicolas de Lenfent?" His lover hazarded. He was trembling and Yu forced himself to not reach out. 

"And was that Nicolas de Lenfent with the physic earlier? Was it he who murdered the poor man after beseeching him for help, like a nightmare vampire? Who nearly attacked me?"

"Attacked--no, no, Yu! You're my light, dear heart! My exquisite beauty, my fetching little creature in--"

"Spare me," Yu spat as he backed up the stairs, and Nicolas' expression crumpled. "At your feet lies a man you killed in cold blood and you try to hide it with flattery?!"

"It's the truth!" Nicolas insisted, finally stumbling and nearly falling into Yu's arms. The mortal caught him mercifully, but when Nicolas looked back up his eyes had changed and Yu startled, kicking him in the face on instinct with the heel of his shoe. Nicolas cringed, but it was only a minor setback as he grabbed for Yu's ankle. 

"Leggo!" Yu insisted, as Nicolas growled and glared at him through the blood dripping down the cut in his forehead. He shook his foot free and the shoe came away in the violinist's hand. Not taking his eyes off this insane beast, Yu tried to back away up the stairs, but like an insect Nicolas scrambled up and grabbed Yu even as he was trying to reach for the cellar door. 

"No, no, my precious little dear," this hungering slavering beast said. "You must learn what it is to submit to your briefest and darkest appetites, as I have done, without restraint or curiosity." He nuzzled and licked at Yu's face, scenting his neck. "You smell so good. I'm going to eat you."

"Please don't kill me. Please, you’re frightening me, Nicolas, please,” Yu begged, his arms caught in Nicki's suddenly strong hands. He did not realize the dead lamplighter's presence outside his side door nor the suddenly careful steps on the floorboards above. 

"Because I just ate?" This not-Nicki laughed, and with a sinking feeling Yu realized there was nothing here he knew of his lover that he could beseech. 

"Because I love you," Yu told him in a faltering voice, because he could find nothing of the man he'd fallen in love with, nothing of the gentleness and appreciation and lost passion in that dark feral gaze above him, above those grinning fangs. “Because we promised ourselves to each other.”

"Hmm, all the more reason to teach you what it is to take and take and take," this monster mused, yanking Yu's head back painfully by his hair. “You smell so sweet, my little oiseau.”

“No! Stop! Stop!” Yu cried out, dropping the candle as Nicolas yanked him to his chest and pressed his struggling figure tight against him in the sudden darkness. 

Nicolas laughed. “People have taken from you all their lives, but what secret desires have they planted?" A sharp pain lanced through Yu and he choked, feeling Nicolas' lips sealed to his neck. He could make out the fangs through the pain, and the hard grip of his lover's hands, and they were walking in a garden at night at home in his father's house in China and he was showing Nicolas the water gardens. The stars were above them and Nicolas looked inestimably handsome with his curling hair and satin and jacquard, for once tidy in all the finery he normally wore so casually with an almost defiant sloppiness against the formality that society demanded. His cravat was a modest collection of white linen at his throat and Yu loved how neatly and carefully tied it was, how sensible he looked. Yu was dressed as he preferred in a Chinese nobleman's robes, and they sat in the pavilion and the peonies were fragrant and enormous in the twilight. 

"I miss you when you are gone," Yu murmured. Nicolas looked at him sadly and he seemed to glow with somber moonlight as he lifted his hands, where rough iron shackles suddenly appeared to bind his wrists. The smell of encrusted dried blood was overpowering and Yu found himself swooning, the world tumbling and falling away into an endless dark beach with grains of sand like endless variations of black diamonds. And Nicolas stood as the bench of the pavilion splintered and fell away and he stumbled on the beach almost blindly, shackled hands stretched out before him, reaching past Yu in the darkness as if he didn't see him. It made him shiver and he moaned. 

The candle sputtered and finally went out, plunging them into darkness, and Yu suddenly felt like he was floating, suspended in the arms of a hard and cold stone statue. He struggled again, tears in his eyes of fear and heartbreak as he wondered what had happened. It must be the theatre director. Nicolas lived in terror of him and had arrived at Yu's seeking aid. Had something he suffered at the director's bidding caused this psychotic transformation?

He felt himself carried up the stairs, and when he tried to rise he fell back, his heart pounding in his ears. 

"Please," he whispered, and Nicolas released him, his skin a flush of rose and health as he gazed lovingly into Yu Mei Xing’s eyes. Yu struggled for breath, and the grip around him tightened as Nicolas’ eyes took on a predatory gleam. His lips drew back and he pressed his lips to Yu’s in a hard kiss that made him struggle and whine in pain. They came away with blood that made him look like he was wearing theatre stain and Yu could have almost laughed if he could draw breath.

“No, no, you cannot die!” Nicolas growled, his hands roaming over Yu frantically, feeling his body roughly as if inspecting him for defects. It was none of the touch of a lover, but Yu didn’t care anymore, he felt like he was floating, fading.

“Ah, I will see you in the next life, my love,” Yu Mei Xing gasped haltingly. “I am no longer frightened.” What did it matter? Nothing seemed to matter. “ But Nicolas was shaking him and it felt like the world was pulling away and he wanted to open his arms at last.

“No, no, no, no, no, no!” Nicolas repeated, and Mei Xing felt his body spasm before he tasted the rich blood, headier than any wine and richer than any broth he had tasted, pouring down his throat like the best of all he dreamed, a river of desire, a liquid embrace. He felt his arms and hands clench greedily and suddenly he was standing and Nicolas was in his arms and he was holding his lover again, and he was kissing and slavering at his neck and drinking and drinking and Nicolas had given a small whine, but he thought he could have more and more of this, this beautiful boy who had found him and given him his freedom and his world and this gorgeous golden draught of eternity. A weak fist rested against his shoulder as if to push him away, but he growled and pulled Nicolas even closer, moaning as he drained him further, and he could feel the shudder and the shaking of the body in his arms as Nicki’s heart struggled to pump to his demands. But he could coax more and more out of it, yes, yes, he could have this forever, drink and drink Nicolas dry until he would never leave Mei Xing alone and they could be together and he would drink again when Nicolas had filled up and they would make love and drink over and over again, and Nicolas would be so light and dry Mei Xing would be able to pick him up with one hand and kiss him so thoroughly he’d be gasping for breath the way he was now, small struggling whimpers coming from his throat.

Suddenly a hard blow struck his chest and he saw a blur of white marble shove him away from his lover. He crashed against the now open cellar door and slid across the floor, only stopping when he grasped the leg of a table. He looked up. There was a boy, younger than Mei Xing and Nicolas both, dressed in somber all-black velvet, but gorgeous in mien and grace, that coppery red hair glinting in the dim candlelight of the hall. He had a fixed mask of fury on his face as he glared back at Yu, and his name was plucked easily from his mind at the same time Yu learned his. Armand. 

"Help," Nicolas whispered, reaching up, much to Yu's confusion. Armand glanced down, his expression shifting to concern before it smoothed out, and he knelt to inspect the prone violinist laying on the floor. He extended a long lily white finger and stroked Nicki's face, and Yu realized the violinist was trembling, spidery blue veins visible across his pale skin. He convulsed, and a pain tore through him so violently he doubled and tried to hold his guts together. 

"Oh Nicolas. Not again," the one called Armand murmured. 

"I need more!" Yu protested as another spasm ripped through him. 

"You are hardly worth the effort of a madman," Armand sneered. "Your maker needs to be re taught the rules and laws that keep our kind safe and secret."

"But he has the blood!" Yu screamed wildly, making Nicolas flinch and curl up. Armand looked between them, suddenly curious. 

"He never gave you the blood before? Or did you never drain him like this before?"

"Drain?" Yu cocked his head to the side but Nicolas had jerked at the sound of his voice, and with trembling fingers he dug his nails into the floor and tried to crawl towards his fledgling. The spasms echoed out of him as his body flushed out the last of his mortality, and oh how it stank worse than the pigsties and middens of a crude village! Even Armand wrinkled his nose, and Yu felt suddenly ashamed. 

The theatre director looked down at the two ruined creatures and then yanked Nicolas up by the back of his collar. Nicolas was trying to take in harsh thin breaths and it wasn't until Armand gave him a shake, trying to get him to stand on unsteady feet and wobbling knees, that Yu realized that Nicolas was laughing helplessly, hisses coming from the back of his throat. 

"You escaped for barely two nights," Armand practically growled at Nicolas, giving him another shake. "Was it worth it?" Yu saw the blue veins on his white skin and marveled at how the scent of his blood still wafted. How his entire body strained for Nicolas now, as if it were all one rigid arrow waiting to make its mark!

Nicolas was glaring at Armand but the hissing laughter wouldn't stop, even as his hands dangled helplessly, one of them still in its iron manacle. Armand pulled Nicolas close to his chest and kissed him hard, ignoring his feeble struggles and attempts to push him away. 

"Leave him alone!" Yu shouted, suddenly between the two without having had to even think about moving. Surprised, he stumbled, and Armand grasped an arm and held him upright even as Nicolas swooned on his other arm, lips bloody and punctured with fang marks. He looked awful, pale and shaking, and the blue veins spidered all over his body even into his face. His head was thrown back and his limbs hung loosely, and Mei Xing could see where he'd fed on Nicolas, the white throat covered in dark blue bruises. Combined with his bloodied and tattered clothing, Nicolas looked like a corpse or at least a murder victim. Only the wheezing of his chest hinted he was still alive. 

Armand looked between the two of them incredulously and all but threw Nicolas at Mei Xing. 

"Get him dressed. Get yourself cleaned up," he commanded easily. "Touch him with your new fangs and you die." He watched as Yu fumbled and clasped Nicolas to himself, desperate and unwilling to let go. His maker was more rag doll than vampire, but he seemed to be rousing as they reached the armoire, and he finally returned the soft kisses on his face. Nicolas moaned as he tried to stand and return them, only to have his knees buckle again. He went down and Mei Xing tumbled after him to kiss him again as he tore the bloody rags off Nicki. He looked unusually thin, as if he had lost a great deal of weight in a short amount of time, and he was paler than Mei Xing had ever seen. The fledgling opened the armoire and felt the tug of his maker’s hand at his ankle.

“I’m sorry,” Nicolas murmured, eyes wide and anxious as Mei Xing glanced back at him. He looked small and starved and Mei Xing marveled at how he had taken Mei Xing against his will, taken his blood and his life and shaped it to how Nicolas wanted. A house, a life, a, a dress. He smiled suddenly despite himself, and Nicolas returned the smile with love in his eyes, assuming Mei Xing was sharing it with him. 

“We can leave now, we can escape while he’s not here!” Nicolas whispered anxiously as Mei Xing lifted him all too easily and deposited him in a chair while he rummaged through the armoire.

“What’s happened to you? Is it because of the blood?” Yes, a corset. He would help with that part. But the rest, the rest he would make him see. He would have him know how it felt, to do it to himself.

“Forgive me. Forgive me, my love,” Nicolas pleaded softly, as if he had given up hope but could not stop himself out of reflex. “I thought to escape my own hell but I made one for you instead, didn’t I?” But he was twitching now, and perhaps the wildness from before would come upon him soon.

Mei Xing did not answer him, obsessed with the idea of seeing him in a dress, making him understand what it felt like to dress like a woman, to feel wrong just for the sake of his lover. He held up a corset to eye the size, and smiled at the confusion of Nicki’s face. Before the violinist could say anything he wrapped the whalebone around his torso, rolling him flat onto the ground and pressing his shoulders against the floor with his knees as he quickly laced up the corset, yanking hard enough to make Nicki wheeze with every grommet. When he was finished, he tied the beautiful yellow silk ribbons in a bow, then thought for a moment and shoved the ends roughly into Nicki’s arsehole dry, making the violinist cry out in surprise and pain. He rose, leaving his lover with short little pants on the floor, knowing he could not take a full breath so long as he wore the corset.

While Nicolas recovered, Mei Xing picked out a golden waistcoat and satin breeches, with a rose gold brocade frock coat. These he donned over a clean white linen shirt and tidy white stockings, and red shoes with golden heels. He was tying a white froth of an intricate lace cravat when Nicolas finally pushed himself off the floor to his hands and knees, still panting, but less winded now that he was accustomed to the corset and had accepted he could not get it off without help.

“There is no delaying the inevitable. We are returning to the theatre—“ The beautiful theatre director trailed off as he entered the room, taking in the sight of Mei Xing dressed resplendently in rose and gold, and Nicolas crouching on the floor wearing nothing but a fine whalebone corset, very tight, looking like he was struggling to breathe, and utterly miserable and wretched. Armand tried to hide the shiver of desire that went through him but Mei Xing’s smile meant he failed.

“Do you like him like this?” the new fledgling inquired calmly.

“Have you done this before?” Armand asked with equal placid expression.

“He preferred me as a girl,” Mei Xing said, resentment creeping into his voice, watching as Armand crouched a little to lift Nicki’s face by his chin. He traced his lower lip with his thumb and pressed hard, seemingly satisfied when Nicki choked back a sob that made his body convulse. “I want him to know what it feels like.”

“Proceed. Don’t let me stop you,” Armand said with an imperious gesture. He pulled up a chair, ignoring Nicolas’ incredulous expression. He seemed stunned into silence, staring at Armand as Mei Xing dragged him stumbling to his feet and shoved a petticoat over him. “No,” Armand said suddenly. “Make him do it.”

Mei Xing laughed, his voice like a bell, and he picked out a dark green satin and black lace dress. He held it out to Nicolas, who stared from Armand to him and down at the dress.

“Nicolas,” Armand said warningly, and the violinist startled, stumbling with arms out into the dress. If he had any blood left he would have flushed in embarrassment as his bottom was exposed, then the dress tucked. Mei Xing helped him with the laces in the back but left him to the stomacher on his flat chest and abdomen, lightly muscled and youthful.

He felt strange in these clothes, out of sorts, and his entire body was strained and tight, aching and screaming for any blood that could be had. He felt so cold even as satin and cloth and chiffon brushed against his legs loosely, so different from the whalebone that caged his breathing and encased his torso and waist. Armand was watching them from the chair as Mei Xing gestured teasingly to a chair, helping Nicolas into it like a lady before offering him the stockings. These Nicolas pulled on as naturally as any man would have, but the skirts got in his way, and when Mei Xing brought him a mirror for his hair he flinched momentarily, uncertain and fearful of what would be asked of him.

“Mademoiselle de Lenfent,” Armand murmured with a small smile, watching as Mei Xing handed Nicolas a comb to brush out his curls. Nicolas was young and his boyish smile and bright eyes gave him an androgynous look, but he was handsome and grown enough that there was something off about putting ribbons in his hair and putting his curls up like a girl’s. His flat chest in the corset and his broad shoulders in the dress further accented this impression of just something slightly off, a beauty but ungainly perhaps, oddly grown. “What a fetching little creature you make.”

“Now who is the exquisite darling?” Mei Xing asked mockingly, stealing a kiss from his gasping lips. Nicolas was breathless from the corset when he was done, panting and looking up at the two of them, looming above him as he sat, hands fidgeting in his lap above the green satin skirts. It made him feel strange, helpless, to be dressed this way before them, and he realized with a shock that Mei Xing was implementing some kind of revenge on him. His lover, now his fledgling, reached for a small ceramic pot at his toilette and dabbed his finger inside, smoothing it across Nicki’s now-swollen lips. He added some to Nicki’s cheekbones, rubbing it in painfully. “Now you look like a rosebud about to bloom.”

“You don’t understand! He’ll kill you before the night is out,” Nicki told his fledgling desperately, eyes flicking between the two smiling little devils. “It’s too late for me, but flee now, for yourself. I love you, mon coeur, please, I’m sor—“ He was cut off by Armand’s brutal slap across his cheek, hard enough to knock him off the stool and onto the floor.

“Hold him,” Armand commanded, and Mei Xing nodded, kneeling by Nicki’s head and grabbing his wrists. Immediately the violinist tried to kick out and struggle, but he’d been drained and was emotionally stricken besides, his world swirling with confusion and fear. Once Armand had arrived, he seemed to shrink and cringe into himself.

“Please go,” Nicolas begged his fledgling, trying to look up at him. Armand distracted him by straddling him and caressing a white cheek, and he snarled suddenly, angry to have had this part of his life exposed. “You weren’t supposed to be found! You were supposed to be safe! You were just mine!”

“I’m not anybody’s!” Mei Xing retorted, shouting in Nicki’s face and shutting him up. “You never understood that! But he’ll make you see, won’t he?” He eyed Armand, who smiled when Nicolas followed his gaze.

“He doesn’t know what we were doing before you came to him, does he?” Armand asked. “He only saw this.” He rattled the iron manacle still attached to Nicki’s bloody wrist, smiling when Nicolas shuddered.

“What is it he does to you? You never told me,” Mei Xing seethed. "But every time I had to fight your memory of where he'd been! Why did I have to suffer a lie to feel wanted by you? Is this not good enough? Or will only his cock do now?"

Nicolas squeezed his eyes shut, clenching his jaw as he listened to his lover's accusations. 

"Answer him," Armand said, kneeling and burrowing through Nicki's many voluminous skirts. His face was solemn and betrayed no hint of his purpose as he slapped Nicki's exposed buttocks beneath the petticoat, making him thrust his hips up involuntarily with a well-trained moan. "Don't you dare dirty these clothes you greedy little slut. They aren't yours, are they? Mei Xing has generously loaned them to you." Mei Xing’s eyes grew large and round at this new information, and Nicolas closed his eyes, stifling a sob as he bit his lower lip against Armand slapping his buttocks, then parting his legs and smacking his thighs.

"Stop," Nicolas hissed finally, when Armand his face, opening his eyes with hatred. "Stop this. Leave him out of it! Let him leave this life!"

"You left him without a choice the moment you decided to keep him a secret from me!" Armand snarled.

“Is this what you are to him?” Mei Xing asked, eyes blazing as he dug his nails into Nicki’s wrists, making him cry out and shake his head frantically. “Is this what he does to you or have you been a whore all along? Did you think to make me one too?”

“No, no, please,” Nicolas groaned, shaking his head. The room was spinning and everyone was shouting at him. He’d been here before. He was held down and people were shouting and he couldn’t understand, he couldn’t escape, and he couldn’t do anything but endure this. “Stop. Stop.”

“You little liar. You’re a playsmith, a composer, a crafter of lies,” Armand said venomously, hand snaking up a quivering thigh and squeezing it possessively, making Nicolas cringe and try to back away, but Mei Xing held him fast and the floorboards were finely polished and slippery. “You and your stories. You should write one about this. About how Nicolette de Lenfent, the foolish little strumpet, the slutty whore, body so eager—“ at this Armand grasped Nicolas’ cock and squeezed hard, producing a yelp and a cut off scream, dissolving it into a confused yet agonized moan as he pumped it quickly and roughly. “Yet who refuses and says ‘no’ with every inch of her lying mouth.” Nicolas squirmed and panted, finding it difficult because of the tight corset, as blood tears ran down his cheeks. He had thought he knew all the hurtful words Armand could craft against him.

“Does he refuse you then?” Armand asked, raising his head as he kept Nicolas captive, one hand erratically pumping his cock, too rough to be of comfort, but too much stimulation and well-trained torture for Nicolas to grow soft. His hips writhed beneath the petticoats and skirts, to his shame, and he tried to hide his face against his pinioned arms.

“He sought sympathy from me, saying he’d been violated the same way I had been as a child,” Mei Xing said with a serious frown, watching Nicolas gasp helplessly, caught halfway between pain and pleasure as he pushed his face against his own skin as if to seek a facsimile of comfort there.

“What stories he tells, but that is what we pay him for,” Armand said almost indulgently, and without warning he shoved a finger dry into Nicolas, making him stiffen and arch in pain, a wordless scream dying on his lips.

“Doesn’t that hurt him?” Mei Xing asked, frowning as Armand began to move his finger and Nicolas trembled, but could not help shifting his hips against the coven master’s hand.

“Do you see how he answers me? Are these the actions of an unwilling and virtuous victim?” Armand added a finger, beginning to scissor Nicolas apart, and was pleased to see the tears began to spill from his eyes anew, the pleading look entering the violinist’s face again. He hooked a third finger inside Nicolas, making him arch and give a stuttering shout, only to wince when Armand slapped him hard enough to turn his head. “Quiet, whore.”

“F-funh, ugh-nh, fuck you,” Nicolas spat, “aah anh ah no, just, fuck, just—“

“Just what?” Armand asked, and slapped Nicolas the other way when the violinist let out a sob, trying to control himself and still his hips. They seemed to move of their own volition as he writhed under Armand’s hand, however, and he looked up at Yu this time with pleading eyes.

“You mustn’t believe him, please, please, my love,” he panted, trying to breathe. “He’s beaten me, he’s threatened me and tortured me until my body is trained better than any guard dog’s. Please, please believe me.”

“Ever persistent, Nicolas,” Armand said, and too late Nicolas felt his legs being lifted, the skirts tumbling down over his chest and tickling his face, and Armand’s cock burning hot as it drove into him without any slickness, nothing but the cold burn of a rasp made just for his own pain.

Something inside Nicolas snapped and he shrieked, thrashing so wildly his body was a froth of silk and muslin, impaled on Armand's cock. 

"Hold him!" Armand commanded. "I will open the way for you. He'll never refuse you again."

“Stop! Stop!” Nicolas screamed, and Armand held his hips down and dug his nails in warningly. He shoved as hard as he could as deeply as he could inside Nicolas, hard enough to make his body move up across the floor against Mei Xing’s grasp. The new fledgling had to shift back to hold his wrists down again, and in a fit of pique he tore off his cravat and shoved it down Nicki’s throat, gagging him and muffling his cries. His maker choked, eyes rolling backwards, body rigid as he struggled to breathe. Armand bounced him on his cock as he liked, enjoying the tightness after two nights of leaving Nicolas alone.

“May I?’ Mei Xing asked Armand politely, and the coven master gestured permissively, curious to see what the fledgling would do as he continued to pivot his hips, drawing brief cut off grunts from Nicolas. “Thank you, sire.” He straddled Nicolas and said, “I can think of better uses for that mouth.” He took out his hard cock and quickly replaced his cravat with it, making Nicolas gag and twitch as he struggled to breathe around the intrusion. Mei Xing smiled, pressing with his thumb down on Nicki’s throat, trying to feel for his own cock through the skin. Nicolas clawed at him weakly, gouging his arms, which instantly healed. Mei Xing glanced back to see Armand’s nod of approval, and the two of them moved in tandem, pushing and pulling Nicolas together as he choked, stiffening and collapsing in and out of the twilight of his consciousness.

“Now who is the little whore?” Mei Xing panted, and the pained look in Nicolas face sent him over the edge. Lest he choke Nicolas to death, he withdrew, only to spurt over his blood tear-streaked face.

“I never, I never called you that,” Nicolas wept, voice raw and rough, cracking. He was jolting back and forth as Armand shoved his hips forward and yanked him towards him with each hard thrust, and his gaze seemed to start to disconnect from the world. Mei Xing reached back and dragged him to the present by yanking on his cock. He gave a groan of pain, shaking his head as he tried to push at Mei Xing’s hand, but he wasn’t strong enough even to shake his own fledgling’s grasp on his wrists. 

“No, you never did,” Mei Xing agreed, taking pity and leaning down to kiss him, smearing the lip stain across his mouth and his face. He let go of Nicki’s cock, producing a sob of relief, and thumbed his bottom lip with a smile. “But you certainly look like one now, a painted courtesan, used any way.”

“What happened to you?” Nicolas asked, then closed his eyes in pain as Armand quickly stripped his cock, angling his own hips to find his prostate. “Nngh! No, no, I don’t want to!”

“You’ll come when I tell you to,” Armand commanded, his hand speeding up. “Fledgling, hold him down tightly. If you let him loose, I shall force him to visit this upon you as well.”

Mei Xing tightened his grip on Nicolas’ wrists and bound them together with ribbon, tight enough to pinch. Nicolas was bent backwards over the stool, and it was not difficult to tie his wrists down to his ankles in a V-shape, so that he could not stretch his ankles but so Armand was undisturbed.

“Hnh!” Nicolas moaned again, unable to stop himself from orgasming as Armand stroked him to completion, spilling over himself underneath his skirts. 

But his eyes widened as Armand did not stop, grabbing his cock with both hands now as he thrust inside, one on the shaft and the other on his glistening head and rubbing its sensitive tip with the palm of his hand. 

“No! No no stop stop!” Nicolas pleaded, hips recoiling, and Armand paused, letting him gain breath, only to pump him again and draw a shriek of pain from him. “Stop! Stop stop stop fuck stop!” Nicolas thrashed wildly, and Mei Xing grasped his hips and held him firmly, understanding Armand’s previous instructions now.

Armand continued, and Nicolas begged and pleaded, and finally screamed in agony as his oversensitive and exhausted cock was tormented again and again while Armand pumped into him. He wore bloody strips into his wrists, he was struggling so hard, and he wore his voice raw, his screaming finally dissolving into near silent hisses of laughter. These huge gulps he choked on every so often, and Mei Xing understood now, finally, what Armand did with Nicolas, and why the violinist could only visit infrequently.

He gazed at the iron manacle as Nicolas moved back and forth, twitching and exhausted as Armand finally gave one last shove, finishing inside him with a satisfied sigh. It didn’t seem possible that this beautiful angel made a leisurely sport out of torturing his lover, that he could only really come when he had driven his partner mad. 

Nicolas’ half-lidded eyes saw nothing in the ceiling, and when Armand gave his limp cock an affectionate pat, a queer half-laugh half-sob issued from his mouth before he fell silent with his panting. The petticoats were stained pink and red from blood, whether from sweat or wounds or anything else, Mei Xing could not determine. 

Armand lifted his head from where he rested his cheek against Nicki’s chest, and eyed Mei Xing, who took a wise step backwards. 

“You tried to kill him,” Armand said, standing and readjusting his clothing with little effort. Nicolas gave a soft exhalation of air, his face finally falling limp to one side. Mei Xing supposed he might have fainted at last, but he couldn’t decide whether to hope for that or not.

“What?”

“Do you know what you are now?” Armand stepped towards him slowly, forcing him to back away.

“What?”

“You’re a little stupid, aren’t you?” Armand suddenly smiled. “Is that what he liked? Someone he could look down on?”

“How dare you!” Yu’s eyes blazed. “We loved each other!”

“Only loved? No longer?” Armand arched an eyebrow. “He deserves better. I cannot fathom what he saw in you beyond a certain exoticism of physicality.”

“I can sing better than anyone I have ever heard,” Yu boasted angrily, stepping forward to meet Armand chest to chest. They were of a height, for the contortionist was slim and small by nature and profession, and Yu thought for a second he had fallen into Armand’s dark dark deep fathomless eyes, like empty rooms trying to swallow him up. “And we promised ourselves to each other. We sang together as we made love and took each other. You look surprised, Monsieur. Have you never heard him sing? He has a wonderful voice, as rich as his laugh. Or have you never heard him laugh before, without being forced through the squeezebox of pain?”

“You endanger yourself with these words,” Armand said warningly, his breath short through his nose. “I was prepared to be merciful.”

“With what you have left with him, I doubt you know the meaning of the word,” Yu said through his new fangs. The Thirst was drawing at him more now, setting him on edge, and he felt more and more himself, less and less like that hungry depraved animal that held Nicolas down and watched with delight as he was forced. He shuddered, glancing at Nicolas with concern but for a moment. It was all Armand needed to grip him by the throat and squeeze, raising him off the floor with a grimace of hate that was terrible to see on that beautiful face.

“Ghk,” Yu ventured, clawing at Armand’s hands and trying to kick out against Armand’s chest, but he wasn’t even given the chance. Armand’s fingers dug into his throat and tore every organ within out in a disastrous spurt of blood, digging until he found what he was looking for. Yu dropped to the floor, choking on his hands and knees as he tried to stop himself from bleeding with desperate hands. His eyes were wide and he felt blindly for what was missing. “—?” He tried. “—!” Armand had torn out his throat, yes, but he had literally torn out his entire throat. Yu couldn’t make a single sound, couldn’t even gurgle. He looked up at Armand in a panic, and spotted his own larynx limp in Armand’s hand. The little demon was inspecting it like a specimen, and when he noticed Yu’s gaze he smiled and struck him with his fist, pounding into his temple until he fell unconscious. He never even felt the rays of the sun burning him up on the roof where Armand had dropped him, and his agony was not long.

 

When Nicolas came to the following evening, his thoughts were in a disarray. Had it been a dream? Had he escaped and turned Yu into a vampire by accident? He was still sore all over and he wanted the sleep again, so he wouldn't have to feel anything. Armand was getting worse. Armand was making him worse. He could barely concentrate for very long, victim to the needs Armand was trying to teach his body. Mindlessly he twitched forward, testing despite himself his restraints. He was exhausted, and all he knew was that he must move, somehow, but why? A new sharp pain emerged from his side, where Armand had flayed him. The skin was raw and tender and stupidly he tried to wriggle away from it, attached as it was to his own torso. It had happened some time. Before, before what he didn't know. He couldn't know how long he had been down here. Nothing marked the passage of the nights, and he could not even trust sleep, not when he had nightmares and visions and often fainted from pain. It could have been hours. It might as well have been years. He might be automatically keeping himself here out of habit, and with a stupid hope he shook out his arms, only to cry out as spears of pain shot up his arms and back. 

The iron manacles around his bleeding wrists remained, and struggling would only gouge even more wounds in them, though Nicolas couldn’t bring himself to stop. He remembered now. There hadn't been a Yu, had there? He hung suspended in the air, heavy rough iron chains at his wrists and ankles to support him, and Armand would tighten the length of the chain whenever Nicolas sagged and his quivering body began to fold in on itself, exhausted from holding himself up or steady. Small silver bells hung from his ears and every toss of his head caused a ringing inside his mind. He felt a queer emptiness around his legs, a cool air breezing through, and he thought in the darkness that it was difficult to breathe, as if he were held in a vise. He could only take the shallowest of breaths, and it made him feel at once claustrophobic and helplessly young. He tried to focus on the pain, but it was fading into the general aches of his entire body, and he felt like he was sinking deeper into these agonies where an easier path whispered to him. He wanted to listen so badly, but he didn't think he'd have the strength to return. He wouldn't be wanted. Someone wouldn't return, he couldn't remember who, someone with hair as fair as the sun, someone with a smile full of laughter and a love that made him strong. But it was oh so hard, and Armand kept making it harder not to listen. Master. Master now. When Nicolas used anything else it hurt so so much he wanted to go inside until Armand, no, until Master turned him inside out and dragged him back to the surface. 

“You’re awake.” Master. Master was here. His tormentor was here. Master. Nicolas shuddered, bowed his head, turned away to hide his face in his arm. It must have been a dream. Jingle tinkle. How could he ever escape this place? Yet even the dream had become a nightmare, and Nicolas had lost his mind in the end, unwilling sensations torn from his body because nothing in his mind nor his will mattered any longer. He only needed to be a beast. A pet. For Master.

“M-Master,” he whispered, straining for him tremblingly. “I, it, it’s hard to breathe.”

“Ah, but you look delightful in a corset,” Armand remarked.

“C-corset, Master?” Nicolas asked, frowning in confusion. “Oh, oh, oh no, oh,” he suddenly said, shaking his jingling head this way and that, realizing it was all real, last night was real, the nightmare was real! “No! No! Where is Yu? Where is Yu Mei Xing?!”

Armand grabbed Nicolas by the cheeks and squeezed hard, yanking his face downwards as far as it would go to meet Armand’s, and wrenched a kiss from bloody lips. With his other hand he palmed Nicolas’ tortured cock, drawing screams from the violinist’s mouth into his own. It was still over sensitized and tender from last night, even with the death sleep of the day, and now it held him in a burning pincer of pain. He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth before shuddering shrieks escaped from him and he threw his exhausted head back, bells ringing as he wriggled desperately to get away from Armand's cruel hand. Shamelessly, he writhed and gyrated his hips in every direction, completely on display and lost in the sole desperate burning purpose of avoiding any touch to his cock. 

“Stop, s-s-top, j-j-just,” Nicolas stuttered, sobbing when Armand released him, his limbs quivering and shaking just above the rough wooden slab, stained with his blood, wincing whenever the tip of his erect cock occasionally grazed it as Armand gently shoved him as if he were in a swing. He heard a switch flip. “Oh God, Oh God, Oh God,” he said to himself, trying to come down from the pain in his abused cock, to relax his limbs and let his muscles stop pulsing. He heard a toneless scream, and was horrified to recognize it, and his head whipped up in alarm.

“Yu!" He screamed for his fledgling, the iron chains and the bells in his ears filling into his head. "Where are you?"

He felt the chains relax and heard the scream again, only to be cut off as he stiffened and strained to hear. 

"Did you know that our body parts survive after death, even after fire, if they are separated from us before?" Armand asked lightly. He took Nicki's chin in a fierce grip and yanked it up so he faced an odd series of chains and pulleys, leading from Nicki's manacles to a dark black box. He opened a little door to this, and sprayed some water inside with an atomizer. It was a moist sound from within and when Armand brought the candle closer Nicolas thrashed in his attempts to get away. What he saw inside made something inside his heart and his mind shatter and a strange wail rose from the back of his throat. 

"No! No!" He screamed, echoed by the intermittent cries from the box. It was a bloody piece of vampire throat, the larynx, the voice box. Armand had killed Yu but kept his voice! "You fucking monster! I'll kill you for this! I'll kill you!" The last was said in a sob as Nicolas shook in tears, unable to believe in his rage at this terrible truth before him. 

"You think you can kill me?" Armand scoffed. "Over a plaything, when you have done less over far more?"

"He wasn't, he had, he, oh God, Yu," Nicolas couldn't speak. His words felt choked and he glanced at the box, only to look away with a grimace and tightly clenched eyes. He gave a shuddering sigh, only to tense again when another scream exploded into the air. His tears spilled over again. "Oh God stop this! Why are you doing this? Why do you keep--why me?"

"To teach you to stop making fledglings," Armand said patiently as if speaking to a child. "Do you understand? Every child you bring into Darkness will meet a similar fate."

"They were mine! You have no right!" Nicolas seethed. 

"I have every right! I am your coven master!" Armand said, grabbing a fistful of Nicki's hair and yanking his head upwards. "I am the Master. Of your body. Of your mind. Of your soul. I will continue until you learn this. I will continue until you truly submit."

"I will never be yours!" Nicolas promised, even as he shuddered against Armand's hand between his shoulder blades, and panted as his skirts were pushed up.

"You look like such a greedy little slut," Armand remarked, enjoying Nicki's panting. 

"Stop, damn you, stop," Nicolas protested futilely, struggling against him as the voice box made its beautiful chirruping. He sobbed to hear that voice, for he knew his fledgling was gone forever, this gruesome souvenir all he had left. 

"If you are good and you remain still and keep the chains taut, you will have your blessed silence. But the moment you relax and thrash, your worthless little ex-lover will remind you what he died for," Armand said. "Let me know what you've had enough."

"Enough, enough, Armand," Nicolas wailed, thrashing again as Armand entered him, slick and ready with blood and weeks of preparation. He moaned, pleasure like a spike down his soul. 

And he stayed tense as Armand shoved into him again and again in the blissful silence of the silver bells in his ears, overwhelming in their closeness as they pressed against him in an echo chamber of sound. But Armand would not stop until he had what he wanted, and he pounded against Nicolas, tearing him open from the inside out and drawing hoarse screams from him all over again. He hardly thought he'd have any voice left, but with humor in his smile, he realized at least his fledgling had enough to spare. 

Nicolas was softening, the elation of his brief escape and tryst with his fledgling, the fearful wilfully blind hope that had just begun to emerge, had all but dissolved from the violinist. Armand congratulated himself on recognizing Yu's corruption from the way he was made. And really, hadn't Nicolas learned from his own death? His own awful prolonged ordeal? Did he really want to risk the pain of hope and all that its loss brings, all over again?

Those small sounds of mindless agony that Armand adored were beginning to erupt from the back of Nicki's throat, but he had skipped entirely over the lovely animal whines he sometimes produced. Perhaps Armand was being too rough, too fast. 

He stopped, withdrawing from Nicki's abused arse with a wet sound and eliciting a faint sigh from his victim. With greedy searching fingers he sank two digits into his now loose hole, testing the limits of its size (ample but not ruined) and moistness (wet and soft and velvety with blood) and stretch (on the verge of nonexistent). He would have to give Nicolas a few days' rest, before it would barely feel like anything was closing in on his cock at all. He felt Nicolas raising and tilting his arse back against his fingers and it almost elicited a chuckle from him. This fledgling never ceased to delight! With rough strokes he rubbed against the edges of Nicki's gape, watching him toss his head against the mixed sensations ratcheting through him, then tugged his fingers out, hooking on the rim sharply and dragging a choking gasp from his victim. 

He then slapped Nicolas' arse hard, drawing a harsh and guttural cry, and repeated the motion, enjoying the way the half-clothed body with shredded petticoat and stomacher hanging in fragments off him spasmed and arched, taut against the pain as he had been well-taught, perfectly on display for Armand to enjoy every facet of his uninhibited suffering in a bloom of bloody silk and muslin. No one was coming, after all, and no one would ever come, and Armand was going to be his world from now on. The coven master luxuriated in the knowledge of complete control and safety in their special relationship. He would permit no one to take it away from him. If Lestat came to collect his lover, if Nicolas ever thought he could be his own person again, Armand would ensure there was nothing left of Nicolas anyone but Armand would want, or at least that Nicolas could not survive without Armand. It could be tiresome, but for something as precious as this boy opening everything to him to own and command, Armand could make the effort. 

Finally, Nicolas' cries had devolved into indistinct, continuous wailing, his entire body thrashing and the voicebox's cries sounding with his, and these turned into whimpers as Armand ran his palm softly over the reddened skin. He gently stroked Nicki's buttocks and then followed the line of his shivering spine to grip the back of his neck and knead the taut flesh there. Nicolas moaned, desperate despite himself for any respite from the constant pain. He wanted to remain strong, to fight, to defy and rebel and refuse, but he had been held in a vise of agony and anguish for so long that this simple kindness had him whimpering and moaning for Armand, willing and pliable beneath his fingers, his endurance and resistance obliterated. 

"I will return," Armand promised, letting Nicolas lick blindly. "In the meantime, constant vigilance, my servant. Remember what happens when you let down your guard and disappoint me." As if to demonstrate his point, he lifted one of Nicki's arms painfully behind his back for the voice box's scream. Nicolas shook his body back and forth wildly in anguish until Armand let go. The screaming didn't stop until Nicolas realized it was his own voice keening to the darkness. Armand tore what was left of Nicolas' petticoats and shoved the bloody rags down Nicolas' throat, forcing them past where his gag reflex once was, like feeding a snake of magician's handkerchiefs into his mouth. He choked, his body convulsing once, twice, then those enormous chocolate brown eyes finally looked up at him in abject misery and desperate pleading. Not rage, not anger, not homicidal hatred when even the worst was happening, but in timid succor. Armand tugged the rags out a bit, but left them where they were, partially lodged down Nicki's torn esophagus. Now there could be no sound but that of the chains and the hellish voicebox. 

Nicolas did not want to lean into Armand's touch like a needy dog for his master, but that gentle palm against his cheek was the only kindness and painless comfort he would have for a while. He allowed himself this luxury, this foible and stumble, and he lied to himself when he said it didn't mean anything and that his resistance was still there. But the whipped animal in him hungered for these moments and it snarled when Nicolas tried to fight. He closed his eyes and surrendered to the feeling of those silken cool hands against his face before he was alone in the darkness, straining and taut and aching. 

The task was not so demanding. Vampires were strong, natural masters of mimicry, and they had matching stamina. But Nicolas had had all the blood stolen from him, his body abused in all manner of ways, his mind violated and his self sexually degraded by the people he loved and hated. By the second evening he was trembling, and the first time he relaxed a forearm, he'd almost forgotten why he was there until Yu's dead scream jolted him out of his dreamlike haze of notes and sounds and all the things he heard that drifted through his head and caught there like fish on a hook. 

Each time it was only one limb, until it was two limbs, and he trembled, going more frantic as he tried to keep still and taut and stretched, not even his body forming anything less than a plank. He tried to will himself to keep tight against the pain, to withstand the burning weakness that made his limbs tremble, but he could not sustain it for an entire night, no, not without blood and not without rest. Every scream from his fledgling’s torn voice box felt like a whip against his back, and frantically he would try to ratchet himself taut once more, only to jerk back down and have that terrible sound thrum through his mind. He’d lost everything, and everything he sought to create as a balm for himself would only serve as the seed for more misery. He tried thrashing and flailing, catching brief seconds of silence when his wildly writhing torso would drag his exhausted limbs into the right configuration. By the third night he had fallen limp, his mouth slack as small soundless whines squeezed from his throat. Armand found him tortured into submission, eyes uncomprehending as they looked up at Armand pleadingly, wanting it to be over, wanting it all to end.

Tears spilled over as Armand finally flipped the switch, ending the sound that kept ringing and echoing in Nicki's head, that toneless high-pitched scream that said, "j'accuse" to him for hours and nights on end. He closed his eyes and felt nothing, only the aches of disused joints and overused muscle as Armand unhooked his manacles--soldered on in frantic grappling moments before a smithy's fire--and gathered the broken bird into his arms at last. Nicolas, mouth stuffed full with bloody cloth still, nuzzled his forehead against Armand's chest, seeking comfort and touch and silence, but the sound went on and on in his head and he couldn't remember how to blink.

"Will you be obedient for me now?" Armand asked softly, turning Nicki's face upwards with gentle touches on his cheek. He smiled as the violinist blindly nosed at his hand like a pup or an infant, and without warning tore the cloth roughly from his throat, holding him tightly as he convulsed and coughed against the burn of its exit. A year ago he would have fought this, and hard, trying to bite and argue and kick. Now Nicolas gave a choking, stuttering whine, and clutched at Armand's sleeves, needing him, desperate for his attentions. 

"Do you obey now?" Armand asked more firmly, yanking his head up by his hair. Nicolas frowned in confusion and distress and nodded, trying to shove his face into Armand's chest. Disgusted, Armand flung his head roughly aside and picked him up like a child, throwing him slumped over his shoulder, his limbs hanging down. His breathing was ragged and as Armand brought him out from beneath the dungeons of his manor house, a faint laughter hissed from his throat, quiet and unceasing. He dumped Nicolas unceremoniously on the bench of his private coach and tapped the door for them to depart. The boy was a mess, but Armand needed him back in his coffin. He'd been missing for 3 days and it was better to have them think his mental disintegration was natural rather than any careful machination on Armand's part to make Nicolas submit. 

Nicolas leaned against his legs, fawning over his knees, and Armand reflected that this wasn't quite what he had wanted. He had wanted his love. His need. This, this mindlessness, what use was it to him? He kicked Nicolas away into a corner, only to snarl when the violinist crawled back towards him like an animal that didn't learn. This was all his fault. With gentle touches he stripped the boy naked of his bloody clothing, surprised by how thin the starving had made him, and wrapped him warm in a cloak. 

Eleni and Felix were there to greet him as usual, both looking guilty and worried for their missing composer and afraid to confess it to Armand. They failed to hide their alarm when they saw the dark chocolate curls poking out of the black cloak-wrapped body in Armand's arms as he pulled him from the coach. 

"Where has he been?" Armand asked Felix pointedly. "If you cannot keep an eye on him so that I find him naked and confused in the streets after three days, exposed to all who might see, let alone the sun, why should I not lock him up with naught but ink and paper?"

Felix looked aghast and Eleni panicked, eyes darting every which way. Nicolas hadn't ever wandered to this degree, had never been this bad! Even in a mad fit he knew to stumble back into the vicinity of the theatre, where one of the nicer urchins would invariably inform Laurent that Monsieur de Lenfent was in the cups again. 

"Let me take him," Eleni offered, reaching out with her hands. 

"No thank you mademoiselle," Armand replied coldly, brushing past her to enter through the side door. His small figure passed in the hallway without being disturbed, for the actors and musicians hid in their rooms.

Felix and Eleni followed worriedly, watching as Nicolas clutched at Armand wordlessly while the coven master sought to disentangle himself from the tormented fledgling. 

"What's happening to him? He's getting worse," Felix whispered. 

"We happened to him," Eleni answered mournfully. All of us. 

“No, no, no,” Nicolas whispered, reaching for any part of Armand he could grasp even as the coven master pried his tight fine fingers from his arm. “Stay with me, don’t leave me alone, don’t leave me, don’t leave me, please don’t leave me in the dark!”

“Where has he been? Have you any inkling at all?” Armand asked them as he relented and Nicolas began to sob gratefully into Armand’s chest, clutching at his clothing as he lay on the little cot of his office, soon bedroom, now no more than prison cell or a patient’s room.

“Nicki, please,” Eleni entreated, coming close and reaching out for him. “What can you remember?”

“No, no, stay away,” Nicolas mumbled, shying away from her and deeper against Armand. “I don’t want to hurt you! Stay away! Get out!”

“You won’t hurt me, child, my darling,” Eleni said, and laid a hand on his shoulder. The effect was instant as his arm whipped out bonelessly, knocking her backwards against his desk. He stared at her in shock and put his hands out in front of him as if to keep her back, scrambling uselessly with naked feet against the canvas of the cot. With Armand’s grip on his arms, he wasn’t going anywhere.

“No, no, get out, get out!” Nicolas said, his voice rising in volume. “Get out! GET OUT!”

“Come. Armand will calm him,” Felix said, helping a shaken Eleni to her feet and pulling her away with him. They shut the door behind them as Nicolas began to cry once more.

“That’s it, you’ve been so very good,” Armand said soothingly, caressing Nicki’s hair and pulling his sobbing face against his chest. He kissed trembling lips and cold cold cheeks and held the shaking vampire. “You’ve been very good, and now you’re mine, and now you’ll obey, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, yes, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I will, I will,” Nicolas whispered desperately. Anything but the darkness again. Anything but…but what came before, but that terror, that mindless terrible horror. “Don’t leave me alone, don’t leave me alone!”

“I won’t. I’ll always be here, won’t I? You’ll always know where to find me at the theatre, and you know where my house is,” Armand promised. “And I will always be here for you, waiting. I always have been. All you had to do was come. Haven’t you been foolish? Haven’t you been lost?”

“N-not foolish. N-not lost anym-more,” Nicolas stammered, swallowing and looking up at his savior’s face. “P-please.” He didn’t even know what he was asking for, ultimately, but Armand would know. Armand would give it to him. And his coven master bent and opened the skin at his throat and he fell, down and down and down, and there were rotting pendulous flowers falling all around him, suffocating him, but they were familiar and they smelled like Armand and he choked on the way day, unable to breathe, surrounded by soft silken petals and collared by a golden circlet shaped like a hand around his throat, and he let himself fall and closed his eyes and let the teeth at the end of the drop pierce his body and impale him everywhere.

Armand let the exhausted and drained fledgling sleep, pleased with the result of this round. Nicolas was stronger than he thought, and what he had thought was a complete mental break was only a desperate flail for any behavior that might mean survival, that might mean some vestiges of sanity. Sometimes a slave could be so strong he broke himself instead of submitting, and Armand did not think he was so unskilled that this might happen to Nicolas. The violinist had tried, yes, and had even tried an escape route, but Armand had milked that one for all it was worth, hadn’t he? He smiled to himself and caressed a stray curl, watching as Nicolas shivered from his touch. The fledgling could have recovered from Les Innocents, certainly, but there was no turning back now. He was as mad as Armand’s skills and talents and experience could make him, and if he was strong enough to recover from that on his own, then there was nothing Armand could do other than outright breaking what made him attractive in the first place, and that would serve no purpose. No, he decided, as long as Nicolas obeyed, as long as they knew to whom Nicolas belonged, all would be well.

Felix and Eleni were waiting for him outside the door, anxious and silent as if listening for any sounds from within.

“He’s never struck me like that before,” Eleni murmured, eyes half-closed as if she could see through the door.

“What is it you do with him that calms him?” Felix asked out of genuine desire to help, bless him. Armand smiled and they took a step back. It still frightened them, these novel turns of emotion.

“I give him my complete attention,” Armand said. “He does not realize how precious he is to all of us, does he? Why would he place himself in such risk and harm otherwise?”

“He had, he had all these dreams, and he had such ambitions for us,” Eleni said, not quite listening. She seemed to be thinking very hard. “We were going to follow his beautiful and elaborate plans. He was lucid enough to assign us all our domains. And he was such a neat hunter, unremarkable but tidy. Like everything else. And even on failing with Justine, he—“ She stopped herself, and looked up at Armand. He knew then that she had figured it out. Perhaps she had had her suspicions, but she had heard and seen too much of late for her to come to any other conclusion. Only upon Armand’s arrival, upon spending more time with Armand after Justine had supposedly died, the coven master possibly a comfort or some solace, two lonely lost souls in mourning, Nicolas had turned…sour. Something in him had begun to fester and rot the rest of him, and she began to see less and less of that frenetic, half-mad fledgling, and more of the ruined ghost he was now. It was Armand, and she’d figured it out. He could see it in her eyes. She knew.

“What?” Felix urged her on.

“Nothing,” Eleni said, eyes on Armand as if, should she look away, he would destroy her without a thought. It was not possible, they had tested that at the death of Les Innocents, and he could not overpower her physically or mentally without the rest of the theatre coming to her aid. He was powerful, but not that powerful. One on one, perhaps, but no more. “Just an idle thought. Meaningless.” 

Armand gave a single nod. Yes, it was meaningless now that the damage was done, wasn’t it? What could she hope to recover?

“I can mind Nicolas. As you said. He would want you to follow your assigned domains of responsibility,” Armand said. “Let him rest. Tomorrow we need a new play, and if Felix and Laurent must tie him to his chair again, so be it.” He left them in the hallway, unnerved by Eleni’s moment of realization.

He stayed away the following week, not wanting to supply Eleni with more evidence for her suspicions, not when they were so fresh and more accurate than ever. The woman paid attention and remarked on such things, and she was more than capable of unnerving even Armand at times, though he would never permit her to discover this. His first arrival in Paris all those years ago as their new devoted coven master had found her most inquisitive and perhaps even grasping, for she had led the coven in his absence with Felix as the devout enforcer. 

Nicolas for his part remained mute, unable to direct rehearsals, seemingly more and more obsolete. He stared at the empty expanse of pages before him as the ink dried on the nib and Felix periodically took it from his unmoving fingers and wet the tip again. The silence was suffocating in his little room, before so full of music and notes. Felix could hardly stand it. He took to caressing Nicolas' statuesque face, trying to coax some expression or life from his eyes and his mouth, but not even a scattered series of kisses on his eyelashes roused him. He moved mechanically as if he had just been turned, feeding when Felix directed, even entering his coffin with none of the claustrophobic fear and panicked protest of earlier.


	9. The Orphaltian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicolas finally escapes, by being captured by a vagabond magician. If there is no plan, can he still fail?
> 
> This chapter contains: sane!Nicki, Magic, Mental Instability, Mental Health Issues, Imprisonment, Body Horror, Gore, Enemas, Rape, Nonconsensual Anal Sex, Mind Break, Mental Breakdown

Two weeks later, Felix finished dragging a body into the Seine and failed to find any trace of Nicolas when he turned around. As for Gabrielle, Nicolas had made no sound, left no evidence, of his departure or his kidnap. There had been no change to his condition. He had simply vanished!

Fearing it was another of Nicki's tricks, or that perhaps he had finally broken and gone to end his miserable existence, Felix was loathe to alarm the rest of the coven into panic and drive Nicolas further away. He tried to scent for that strange desperate bright burning mind, that electric smell of thoughts whirling so quickly their bearer sought to flee from his own inescapable mind. He had tracked Nicolas before this way, skirting the edge of chaos, and he had hours before the sun would rise. Nicolas had said it was Felix's own built up immunity from his time with the fervent manics in the monastery that permitted him above others to seek out his mind without becoming lost in it. Delphine had tried it once. She would not speak of it, but she spoke softer towards and her attentions were far less ardent upon the concertmaster. His swift, erratic movements and behavior during one of his fits were no longer alarming to her, and indeed she was no longer afraid of him, and instead sat patiently as he wore himself out with the other orchestra members, and stared at her sheet music. Felix wanted to pull no other member into the same intimacies with Nicki's mind, and so he began to search energetically.

Meanwhile, the streets were gloomed in shadow and Nicolas felt himself waking with every step, every grudging slog of his legs through the suddenly thick air around him. The alleyways and streets bent and sheltered him but they suffocated as well, and like a bird he quickly grew disoriented in the maze of streets that was Paris then, the sky blocked from his view as he followed the dark tendrils he thought he saw whispering through the cobbled. He ought to get back, somewhere, he was supposed to tell someone, he couldn't recall. But here was something new and the delicious dread that seeped into his bones and made his teeth chatter was altogether too visceral and real to be from from the Master. He still couldn't didn't want to invoke the name. It was too much, too fearful, too strange. You thought of it, Eleanor had mentioned it, and He had come.

The stench of human was growing stronger. Death here recently, but families living here too, that stink of offal and human grime and filth mixed with fountain water and children's milk. He stumbled once, disturbed a sleeping mortal covered in dirt and rags, and drew back, then forward in alarm at how human it looked.

"Was I one of you once?" He muttered, watching as the mortal's eyes grew large and awake.

"G-get away from me!" It shrieked, tossing up its rags and scrambling backwards.

"Shh, you don't have to be afraid," Nicolas said with a low laugh, pretending to look around. "We're alone here, aren't we?" He reached out with a pale white hand and thumbed the ancient mortal's cheek and ran his fingers over the wrinkles in his face. He would never be this old, never scar from Amiens, never have that wound on his back he felt when the weather was cold, never hurt on his shoulder from when-- "Remy..." Nicolas whispered, thinking of the fight in the stable over the pony when the ancient man was five and people still dressed in flouncy clothes in the reign of the Sun King.

"Get away from me, boy! I wouldn't be touched! He said!" The man took a deep coughing breath, frightened by this strange youth.

Nicolas frowned. "Why are you so afraid of me? I've done nothing."

"You can't fool me. Demon. Monster. Trickster." The man spat at Nicolas' feet, making the violinist draw back. "Killer of children."

"No, not me. I saw something else here," Nicolas said. He made a decision. "Who are you waiting for? What are you bait for? Tell me!"

"He said you couldn't touch me!" The man screeched, trying to kick as Nicki's strong implacable grip lifted him by the lapels of his filthy coat.

"Well he was wrong!" Nicolas snarled, losing his patience. His curiosity would only come so far. He leaned in to bring the mortal's death close, only to catch a glimpse of a yellow pin flashing as it emerged in the half-light from the man's coat.

"Begone!" The man yelled, stabbing it at Nicki's chest. It was as if he had thrown a spear through Nicki's heart instead, and Nicolas gasped at the pain, dropping the mortal as he clutched at his wound. His hands scrabbled for the yellow pin, but the pressure worsened as did the pain, and he could hear his teeth grind together as he fell to his knees, clutching his chest. Dear God, the pain! It was nothing like he had felt, not even when, not even the, the, not even--Nicolas opened his eyes and tried to grab a loose cobble, but the darkness was clouding into his vision and he felt the world compress around him, his body pulled in a million shivering directions and stretched until he fit again.

And then the pain stopped as soon as it began, leaving him crouched over himself on his hands and knees, gasping for air he didn't need.

"Oh fuck, Renard you've gone and bollocksed it up again, haven't you? Who the fuck is this?" He heard someone say angrily. It was in English, and he opened his eyes to the cold large stone slabs of a basement floor. His hands did a crude inspection of his body and could not move the yellow pin, in the shape of an 8 pointed star, stuck bloodlessly through the linen of his shirt into his chest. He looked up and through his disheveled curls he could see a mortal with dark blond hair, the profile of his face almost regal but for a slight crudeness around the eyes, a predatory hardness that gave Nicolas pause. He was dressed in dark brown, nicer cloth than the usual commoner but broadcloth nonetheless, and the sleeves of his frock coat were stained with ash. He smelled strongly of tobacco and Nicolas felt a fresh pang of grief and regret.

"Jesus, it's all right, boy, how could he mix you up with a Orphalthian I don't know. Come on out of the circle. I can almost smell your fear-“ The man gave a pause and fixed steel blue eyes at him, his gaze intense and piercing like a hawk's. "But you're not frightened. Why?" He left the grimorium at his worktable, a brittle text with thick thick rough leather covers that had to be bolted together. Nicolas couldn’t hear what the leather was from, whether it was the scream of cattle or humans or sheep or something else. He squatted down to meet Nicolas at eye level where he lay in the centre of the magic circle he had chalked into the floor, and squinted his eyes for a second to see Beyond as well.

The young man was just a boy, really, pale with fright or shock or whatever that smell was, like finely polished wood and a warm hearth, with large dark eyes that returned his gaze with a sensible intelligence that reminded him of so many of the young students in Paris, full of hope, ready to throw themselves into the thresher of revolution and martyrdom, if the rumors were to be believed. Whispers in the air spoke of blood. His cheeks and pointed chin were smooth and free of hair, he looked that young, and the man’s eyes traced the innocence of that smallish mouth and he thought of sinful things that made him strike his thigh with his fist. The motion made the youth draw back in alarm, then suspicion.

It was such a calculated act that the man scratched at his hair shirt through the linen and tilted his head. Then he saw it. All the ghosts screaming. He went very still, and peered again, and he saw the ghostly blue shades of all the people the boy had ever hunted or killed, standing behind him, waiting. A girl reached out, her bloodied hand barely brushing tousled curls that looked soft and yet silken, as if they had been very finely shaved from a bar of chocolate by an army of small mice. And the man knew the boy was not pale with fright or shock or anger or anything. The boy was pale because the boy was not human.

He took a step back from the circle, and the creature watched him, its expression never changing from that neutral gaze save for the occasional twitch that made it seem like he caught something at the edge of his hearing and could not help but give it attention. It was an odd nervous tic and the man had never seen it before in those without the Sight. And the boy couldn’t hear them, but every time one of the dead moved, he twitched as if hearing it instead. Curious.

Someone had dressed him like a lawyer or a cleric, one of those young ambitious youth filing in and out of the Sorbonne and the fashionable offices. He was in all black, the only white on him his conservative linen cravat and his silk stockings. The creature’s body was slim, and the man could sense the hidden power in the toned muscles and the firm, supple calves. But it still reminded him of having caught a magpie in a net. He’d never seen a vampire so lost before. They were usually self-righteous devils, arrogant to the extreme about a mage’s impunity and presumption.

“Should I- -,” the youth said haltingly, as if unused to speech, and indeed his voice seemed to grow used to volume as it grew less shy and hoarse. “Should I be afraid?”

“You weren’t what I was looking for, but-,“ the mortal paused. “You could be useful.”

“Sir, I have had my fill of being ‘useful’, if you’ll pardon my disagreeableness,” the young man said with surprising civility, picking himself off the floor at last with a lithe athleticism that made the man cringe again, then wonder where the creature had come from. The young man was straightening his clothes and had finally noticed the chalk outlines on the floor. “What’s this? Are you a magician? Were you going to summon a flock of doves and received me instead?” The wry smile was a surprise and despite himself the man found his lips curling to return it.

“Renard, that’s the poxy stinking gentleman who accosted you, was supposed to pin this on the Orphalthian. So you’re half right,” the man said. “He’s been worse for the drink lately, on account of the misadventure with the lost souls from Carpathia, but at least his Sight didn’t miss a supernatural creature when he found one.”

The words were said in one quick rush. “I hope your words do not intend the accusation they imply. Surely you do not truly believe you are really some sort of sorcerer, an enchanter or mage of old tales? You seem far too-“

“Grubby? Bourgeois?” The man asked with a raise of his eyebrow, causing the young man to change his incredulity to one of skepticism. “Try stepping over that line. Go on. Or removing the pin. You think you know everything. The youth of these times.”

“Listen asshole,” the boy said, beautiful in his anger as his brow furrowed and he raised a finger towards the man. The man held his breath, briefly mesmerized, as if watching a beautiful but deadly bonfire that coaxed him towards its heat. The young man took a step forward, but it was as if he had struck an invisible wall made of electricity that gripped him and shook him until he was but a blur of pain. He cried out in a mixture of shock and surprise, his muscles seizing, and to the mortal’s surprise, persisted, splayed fingers clenched like claws as they scraped against the barrier. Alarmed, the mage ran to his grimoire, but his fears were needless when seconds later the boy dropped to the floor, still within the confines of the chalk circles, panting for air as the twitching in his limbs subsided.

“Do you believe me now?” He asked, trying to sound smug as he walked slowly up to the circle until he was very close to the chalk.

“Putain…” The boy panted, looking up at him and then pushing himself to his knees, pausing, then to his feet. A finely made finger traced the edges of the yellow star in his chest, but the creature did not take his eyes off of the mortal. “Who are you? What is this?”

“John Aberdeen, at your service,” said the mortal with a small bow, though that was hardly his real full name should any other mage want to use it in a spell. “And that is a pin meant for capturing an Orphalthian, although I will make a note that it works just as well on vampires in keeping a preternatural creature inside the bounds of this circle of binding.”

“How?” asked the creature, thoroughly confused. John thought he saw a lip curl into a snarl, but while those fine hands shook, they did not rise to bang against the perimeter and incur more pain.

“I sympathize with your concern, but what I am really quite interested in is where your lair is, and if there are others like you. Ah, and if you have sensed a creature such as the Orphalthian,” John stated, going to his grimoire and picking up a quill. He made several notes on this particular encounter as the creature seethed inside the circle.

“You fucker,” it said heatedly. He had not expected it to be so versed in modern language, to possess such emotion and to create such a facsimile of humanity. “You have no idea what you’re doing. This was your dumb fuckup and it’s my bad luck I ended up here.”

“My, we are modern, aren’t we?” John asked, amused as it began to run its fingers through its hair. He thumbed through a few pages and found the incantation he needed, and the gestures. Repeating them wordlessly under his breath, he raised his hands and gestured at the creature in the youth’s body. “Perhaps you simply need a little incentive. I don’t know what you did to get that poor boy’s body, but I’m sure you still feel what I can do to it.”

As soon as the creature fell to the ground from the needle pain spell, however, which had tormented dozens of others—including on one notable occasion, the Crown Prince of Bohemia—into providing some of their innermost secrets, the screaming laughter began. John was so surprised he simply stared as the pain and the laughter continued, his limbs jerking and twisting against it. The pain was supposed to be unbearable. Men harder than this callow youth, grizzled war veterans, had screamed and sobbed and shat themselves and begged for their mothers, at the same time.

With a flick of his wrist, he ended it, leaving the boy panting on the floor, staring at the dark wooden beams on the ceiling while the occasional sobbing laugh escaped from him. It was as if he couldn’t help it.

It suddenly made John feel sorry.

He lowered his hands and knelt by the circle, watching the broken boy, wondering what the answer was and what possible question he would need to ask. He had seen this before, in old mages gone sour. Too many gibbering things from the oily darkness between worlds had come and found them, too many seconds in hell had imprinted moving images inside the cave of their minds that they could never stop seeing. They treated torture and death and pain as follies, meaningless pastimes in this world, but all the same, the sane part of them suffered alongside the twisted thing that found it absurd. The laugh John had heard did not belong on such a young boy, despite the immortal demonic and evil creature that inhabited it.

“What happened to you?” John asked softly in wonder. He had fought demons and witches and other mages. He had battled the devil and possibly Satan himself. He had resurrected the dead and tricked succubi and drunk of potions and liquids forbidden to man. It was folly to think he could not feel all the more for it. Even the lowest imps of hell and the most indulgent dukes of that eternal darkness avoided unwilling torture and pain, had avoided this if they could help it, preferring to trick their way out of an answer.

“Let me go,” the boy croaked, holding his middle as if he hurt still.

“Tell me your name,” John said urgently. “Where do you sleep?"

"No, just leave me be," whispered the youth, beginning to turn away. John tried again.

"Who was your maker?”

“FUCK! YOU!” The boy suddenly screamed at him, making him bowl backwards in alarm and land on his rear. “FUCK YOU, you English dog!” This he said in English, to John’s surprise, making him laugh. “You think this is funny?” His accent was very faint, and it gave John a shiver of delight.

“You’re so human!” John exclaimed, slapping his thigh with a laugh, no longer alarmed or concerned. This demon was clever, all right.

“You’re an idiot,” said the young man in disgust, in French again, and drew his knees up close to his chest and hugged them. Faint giggles escaped him, like hiccoughs torn from him, and he gulped against them as if in pain.

“Most likely, but I’m not the one stuck in a magic circle being laughed at now, am I, mate?” John asked, lighting his pipe. “Hope you don’t mind. Not as if it’ll kill you.” The boy said nothing, and refused to look at John. “Ah, the silent treatment then? What’s wrong with you? Possess a defective model?”

The boy turned his face to him with an incredulous look, then made a face of absolute disgust. It was like watching masks shift across a beautiful statue, and John held his breath as he watched. “You know absolutely nothing,” he whispered, then buried his face in his arms, shielding himself from view in a tight bundle.

“Suit yourself, mate. You’ll be begging for blood soon enough, and when I’m tired of entertaining you, I’ll just open the curtains,” said John, leaving the pipe lit just out of the vampire’s reach. He forced himself not to look back as he walked away, picked up the grimoire, then took it with him as he left and closed the door.

The vampire made no sound the following night, giving John the silent treatment, but by the third night his chest seemed to be heaving as he struggled to breathe smoothly.

“All right, mate?” John asked.

“I’m not your mate,” the vampire hissed, and John was surprised to see him look up with eyes that were no more bloodshot than his own. Apart from a marked gauntness, he looked no less like the boy John had first captured.

“It occurs to me that you might be thirsty,” John mused, picking up the pipe and lighting a match beneath it. He took note of the way the vampire’s nostrils flared, and he seemed to clutch at himself a little harder the closer John approached him. John could have bounced a pin off the tension in the tight ball he’d made himself. The giggles had diminished the second night, but the confusion had begun then too, vague answers about where they were. The boy forgot occasionally who John was, or what was happening, gaps in the conversation where he seemed to listen for something. Only the anger and hate for John could channel his focus.

“What is it you even want?” The boy asked. Then he added, in English, just for John’s benefit, “fucker,” under his breath. John gave a sharp bark of laughter, startling the creature’s shot nerves and making him jump, then hug himself even harder.

“I want a name. I want a place. I want the rest of your coven in your lair. And then I want to smoke all of you out into the sun,” John said with a smile.

“Oh,” replied the boy, looking off into the distance. “You could have told me you wanted to kill them all. I can help you.”

“What?” John asked, surprised.

“I hate them,” replied the boy, but then shuddered as John took a step towards him. “I c-can’t…”

“Hungry, are you?” John asked, putting out the smoke in his pipe. It captivated the young man’s gaze, the smoke drifting through the air. “Oi!” He waved the pipe before the young man's eyes to snatch his attention back.

“What are you doing here?” asked the young man with suddenly narrowed eyes.

“You said you hated your coven. That you would help me slay them,” John prompted hesitantly.

“What? Who are you?” the boy asked, looking bewildered. The moment had been lost. "Wh-where is this?" He unfolded, trying to look around himself.

“Look,” John said, kneeling down and attempting to be kind. “You’re hungry, aren’t you? Hard to concentrate when you’re starving, I’ve been there.”

“I’m tired,” whined the creature, burying his face against his knees again. He gave a muffled sigh. “So many voices. So many, just, everything dying. All the time.”

“I’ve a few ghosts myself,” John agreed, thinking of the friends he’d betrayed, the family he’d abandoned.

“I just want to leave. I want to not, I want, I just want. No one will ever understand,” replied the boy, his voice muffled. “I want to not want. I want to give up. I am so tired of fighting. Aren’t you tired, Johnny?”

“Yeah,” John said, surprising himself with this admission. Never give the enemy any show of weakness. Never let…well, he was having trouble seeing this lad as anything more than a lowly imp on the totem pole of being royally screwed over in life. Something wrong had happened to him before he was yanked into John’s circle. He’d tried some other torture spells. None of them had really made any effect beyond causing a shrieking laugh that forced John to his knees and nearly deafened his eardrums. The boy was impervious to that sort of incentive. If John were completely honest with himself, he would confess that there was an almost sinful way in which his victim threw himself into the pain and simply drank it up, writhing and screaming out as his body sank into the depredations of the spell. Almost as if, no, but, demons loved inflicting pain on others. They didn't relish it themselves. And in any case, the creature seemed to dislike it. No, it was more that he pretended to embrace it very well.

And he still got no closer to the Orphalthian, and two more bodies had been found the same way, their ears bleeding. Renard had fled town for Lyons, pursued by gambling creditors, and John was left with no assistant and an untamed pet vampire. He needed to make another move soon.

"Wh-mnh," the boy mumbled, picking at his own cuticles and seeking out invisible crumbs on the floor. "Hmnh."

"What's your name?" John asked softly and as neutrally as possible, watching the boy drift in and out.

"Nic," he mumbled softly, and John almost thought he'd misheard. He'd never answered before. The boy twitched, shook his head as if to drive away a fly, and in the half light of the candle he did look tired. John had never met a tired vampire before. Most of them were busy trying to kill him. The boy shook his head to himself, then bent his head to his left and closed his eyes as if listening for something.

"Nic?" John asked tentatively, and the boy raised his head as if being woken from a reverie, blinking sleepily. "Nicolas? Are you in there?"

"Wh-why?" The creature who called itself Nic asked, and covered his face with those fine hands. They looked almost skeletal in the light, and John realized the vampire was starving.

"Are you hungry?" He asked, and held himself in place as the vampire's face popped back up into a desperate yearning, a burning look in his dark large and hollow eyes as he glared at John.

"Musn't, mustn't, I was---I was supposed to tell!" The boy cried, looking worried as he began to wring his hands. John scrambled back to his grimoire as the vampire grew more distressed, and before he would start to frenzy, cast a calming trance upon him. The quiet was instant, and he looked faintly stunned instead, walking in less of a fever dream and more like a zombie John had met in the colonies.

"Who do you have to tell?"

“Before the cobbles. Before the lash. I’m so hungry. Hungry. You smell rich and bad for me."

"Hah. I am probably. Never want to drink a magician's blood. You never know where it's been."

"Hell. And Anna. And Elizabeth. And Georgiana. Ah and George and Harold."

"Wh-what?" John went almost as pale as his prisoner. "Did you read my mind?! How do you--"

"You're a bloody bastard, Johnny Crenshaw Aberdeen. All you can magic is how to use someone until they're dead!" It was Elizabeth's accent coming from that rich young man's tenor and it made John stagger back for a moment. He began the incantation for an exorcism, then stopped when he realized the vampire was starting to shake off the trance.

He scrambled quickly for the silver ring he had prepared in advance, and cast a spell over it as his pushed through his own barrier. It was delicate and fine, about a half inch thick, attached to a series of links that cascaded through his fingers, and he quickly noosed it around the vampire's neck, cinching it snugly before locking it with a spell. He was just in time to be knocked to the floor by the vampire's arm as it broke from the hypnotism, and felt the wooden floorboards slam into his shoulder blades hard. The vampire straddled him and yanked his face to one side, exposing his neck. John supposed he ought to be terrified, looking up between the cold fingers pushing his face down to the feral focused gaze of the hunter above him. Instead his own hand remembered what to do, looped the chain around his fist and yanked hard, magnifying the force of the gesture and pulling the vampire off of him by the neck. The expression of surprise was priceless and John found himself laughing as the vampire felt tentatively and quickly around the ring for the clasp, surprised when he could not disengage it.

"How do you get it off?" The boy snarled, yanking John to his feet in one hand by the lapels of his brown frock coat. He was furious, his brow knitted and his hands trembling.

"It's a very old spell, and so it has survived for a very long time. You can't even put me in danger to break the spell. I must release you of my own free will," John said smugly.

"You--argh!" growled the youthful student, shoving his hands through his hair and tousling his curls into a part. He yanked at the chain a few times, but it held fast even as he scratched rivulets into his own neck, ones that bled and healed almost instantly. Almost. He needed to feed.

"Hungry, are you?" John asked, eyeing him carefully as he packed up his grimoire.

"You keep asking me that. Not that it matters from one brutish master to another," grumbled the young man, stuffing his hands into his coat pockets sullenly. He was unreasonably charming when he was angry, and John found it hard to think of him as simply a creature or a demon as he had other vampires.

"Who was your previous master?" John asked urgently, giving the chain a faint toss.

"Fuck off, I'm not a horse!" The boy said irritably, then gave him a sidealong look. "You really are just a simple beast of the Third Estate, aren't you?"

"Oh no, I've captured a politician," John groaned in jest.

"I wouldn't have expected you to know of political theory."

"I know how to read, Monsieur. Whatever you might think of me, I am not unlearned," John replied. The boy appeared to consider this. It was altogether a different demeanor from the hunger crazed monster of before.

"What do you intend with my imprisonment, if you have not exterminated me yet?" He asked thoughtfully.

"I thought we'd come to an agreement. I require an assistant," the Mage said almost proudly, as if he had arrived at a particularly magnanimous solution.

"An assistant? Not a-" the vampire began, then stopped himself, growing serious again. He sneered. "What would such assistant duties require? You would have me bound to your service and your children's service for all eternity, like some unholy djinn?"

"God you'd be annoying if that were the case," John snorted, surprising the vampire. A look of innocent surprise passed over the boy's face and John laughed with the patience and amusement of someone with years Nicolas didn’t and never would have, no matter how long he lived.

"You can't even compel me to perform tasks. You know the torture doesn't work on me," the vampire said bitterly, and he hugged his arms to himself.

"No, it doesn't, does it?" John agreed. "You'd rather die first." He raised his fingers and tilted the boy's chin up, only to be rewarded by a rapid drawing back, a snarl and a hiss of genuine offense.

"Don't touch me!"

"Of course not," John replied, dropping his hand. He looked askance at the boy as he gestured into the air, turning some pages in his grimoire before he traced invisible sigils that made the vampire stiffen and look directly at John. His lips parted in a soft O of shock and a moan escaped his throat. It was full of longing and pain and John wasn't sure if he should continue. Tear tracks were flowing down the vampire's cheeks, red and dripping, and as John continued the spell, the boy fell to his knees, barely catching himself with the heels of his hands. John finished the incantation, swiping a finishing symbol across the final sigil, and the vampire gave a soft sigh of relief and resignation, his entire posture sagging and collapsing in on itself.

"All right then?" John asked, as the boy caught his breath. The eyes that looked back up at him were filled with fear. "If you do what I say, I'll let you see it again. You can feel what it's like."

"H-how did you know?" The voice was soft, as if afraid to break the spell and its lingering warmth. There had been light. And warmth. And love. And he was not alone.

"Don't you think I've been there, know what I stand to lose?" John asked bitterly. "Nothing more than a guest, but there long enough to know the bargain I was striking."

"What bargain was that? What unholy creature tempted you with Heaven?"

"Souls for demons. I must balance my ledger."

"And you can provide this, this illusion--"

"It is no illusion. It is much like the clearing of a window all around one's person. A secret window. Only one other mage ever knew of its existence, and he died young as many mages do. Were any denizen of that heavenly sphere to discover it, they would have surely repaired the fault," Crenshaw explained.

"So it's real. It's real," Nicolas repeated to himself, looking off. “You’re real, I’m real, it’s real.”

"Now then. Who was your previous master? Who do we have to contend with? Who will try to reclaim you?”

"Are you going to compel me to answer, if I am to be your vassal and slave now?" The young man snarled, spiky with suspicion once more.

"I could," John said with a shrug, as he cast an illusion to dissolve the appearance of the chain into no more than a shadow. "My preference lies towards less painful methods. I would have us be if not fellow men or humans, then subjects under God. Compelling a homunculus, conjuration, or slave twists and pulls the essence of their being, and I have found that pleasure and loyalty produce such better results."

"Even when they're a lie?" The boy asked, and smiled unkindly when Crenshaw flinched.

"Come. I need you to find a demon for me. It's been eating women and children and it is styling itself as something Fortequeue's Bestiary calls the Orphalthian,"

"And how am I to find a demon, o wise master Mage?" The boy asked mockingly. "I am but a poor servant unversed in magic, bound by a hedge wizard who cannot even afford an evening coat.” They looked at each other, surprised by their shared amusement at this insult delivered without heat, without conviction, more with the laziness of someone feeling out the borders of tolerance.

"Preternatural beings are naturally attuned to others," John explained. "You'd be able to sense another creature poaching on your territory. And this loyal coat was tailored for me by a mystic on the tea mountains of Formosa! It protects me from all manner of incantations.”

“And from good fashion sense as well, I see,” Nicolas replied wryly, folding his arms and leaning on the table to look up at John.

“You’re a cheeky monkey aren’t you?” John asked with a smile. “Just how old are you?”

“Twenty-nine, if I were still mortal,” the boy answered truthfully, to John’s surprise. The silver ring he wore had a milky white stone set into it, and it glowed blue before fading. “So that’s how it works.” The boy tilted his head at it to inspect it. He shook his head, suddenly, distracted, and hugged himself tighter. He seemed to suddenly thin before John’s eyes, his blue veins growing darker, and his eyes bulged briefly. His eyelashes were very fine and they fluttered rapidly as a faint twitching overcame him.

“You need blood,” John observed, ignoring the boy’s roll of eyes. He nodded to himself. “Come. You shall be as an Angel of Death in the sick wards. A bringer of hope for those who have forgotten its taste. I’ll not have you steal any more lives than necessary.” With a faint jerk of his ring finger he bid the boy follow him, and found it a surprisingly easy way to keep the hungering vampire focused. The creature did not seem to mind the chain now that the hunger distracted him, and walked like an automaton through the nearby hospital where nuns in the large wimples of Breton ghosted from bed to bed, checking on their fevered charges.

“So sour,” the boy said, hugging himself again, but his eyes were huge and he seemed to strain against an invisible yoke. He looked past John, his gaze unfocused but pleading, and John gave a nod towards a man abed, just entering the middle of his years but coughing up black that would poison him before the night was out. With a soft sigh the boy alighted with his knees on the edge of the sickbed, and gathered the briefly struggling man into his arms. It was quick, and John watched, fascinated, as the man’s hands tightened around the boy’s shoulders until they relaxed, the two of them falling back down into bed together. A shudder passed through the vampire and he gave a great gulp of air as he surfaced, flinging himself back from the cooling corpse beside him. The man had died peacefully, his neck wounds bloodless, but there was something wrong with the vampire that John had never seen before.

The blood was filling him out, yes, returning him to that preternatural perfection, removing the gauntness and replacing it with a leanness he associated with youthful energy. The boy looked barely twenty, after all, and if he had been a vampire for almost a decade, he must have been in trouble the night he was taken unawares by Remy, of all people.

“Boy,” John whispered urgently, and slapped the vampire on the face. “Nic!” The creature shivered, and his eyes were so large it looked like he was floating on opium. He dragged a lazy finger down John’s scraggly cheek as if feeling the texture for the first time. Perhaps he had never grown whiskers. He looked so young.

“Bon soir, John,” he whispered, and to John’s surprise, smiled a smile of simple joy, of a market dance and an apple tree and the warm closeness of amber sunlight in a dusty workshop on a cold autumn day. These he saw in his mind and when a well-dressed wealthy boy entered the scenes he looked like Nicolas but younger and he saw John and offered up something in his hand with a charming smile. John stepped towards him closer, entranced by this boy and his soft somber light, and looked down into one palm and reeled backwards because it was nothing more than a bloody pulsing heart, dripping red with each beat, and John clapped a hand over his own mouth to muffle the strangled scream.

“Get up!” he hissed urgently, and yanked the confused creature to his feet. “What the hell was that?” The boy looked at him as if awakening, and John realized he had no idea what John was talking about.

“Unhand me!” The creature demanded, taking his arm back and straightening his clothing to rights with the offended air of an aristocrat.

“Are you full?” John asked, and the creature frowned but nodded, looking at the other beds longingly. “Fine. Then we’re going.”

No words passed between them as they left the damp coughs and struggles of the free charity hospital and returned to the street where Remy had captured Nicolas. The prickliness that tickled Nicki’s senses from before was now back in full force, and he felt the rottenness of death pass over him.

“There’s been another,” he said, suddenly realizing what it was they were looking for.

“I thought you didn’t know—“

“I’m not stupid.” An irritated look. “One has only to find corresponding patterns. Child’s play. It is a wonder they permitted you to be a sorcerer.”

“Mage, you little twit. Now what’ve you found? Are we in the right place?”

“Surprisingly, and you’ve a fresh kill tonight if that’s helpful,” Nicolas replied, strolling down the small street casually with his hands in his pockets like any gentleman. The blood had been good for him, and something about the way he could converse with John was keeping him focused. John followed his elegant figure, his own hands fingering talismans and amulets in his endless pockets, wondering what it was they would find.

“Jesus Mary!” The vampire suddenly stepped backwards, running into John, and clutched a corner and retched. John turned away, knowing there was nothing he could do to prevent himself from ending the dread that now rose in him, and faced the scene that had made a vampire sick with fear and disgust.

A child and a woman, perhaps her mother, were deftly hidden behind a few old boxes, perhaps once used as a shelter from the elements by the city’s poor. They were…open. More precisely, their ribcages had been turned into what looked like a xylophone, joined by what perhaps was a coccyx, it being hard for John to tell in the dark. Vampires could see in much dimmer light, and John conjured a magelight in his hand. What he saw made it shiver a little, but he kept it alight. He had seen so much worse, and it brought a grim set to his jaw. He could hear the vampire sniffling outside, and wondered what kind of evil creature could find sympathy and fear with human suffering like this. The child’s arm was resting on her mother’s, her face in repose, but her entrails had been pulled out and tightened on her outstretched arm, turning it into a macabre harp.

“Orphalthian, you called it,” the vampire said behind him. John turned away from the awful sight of those empty eyes staring, removed from their sockets and placed inside the cavity where their hearts used to be. “From Orpheus?” His voice was dry and hoarse.

“Yes,” John said, and they looked at each other in silence, perhaps to bear witness to the two who sat there. “When it’s done it flesh crafts its victims into musical instruments. Minor demon of the seventh circle, sixth ring.”

“I don’t know what that means. But you will not require a silver ring to obtain my aid in this matter,” said the vampire solemnly, and John looked at him more carefully. He was paler now, and the street was clean, no indication that he had vomited, if vampires could vomit, but he seemed still to be shaken and weak from the sight. “I would find a special pleasure in bringing it to justice.” John thought he felt the vision of an acrobat, a lithe and beautiful silhouette, but Nicolas had said nothing.

“Excuse me if I still choose to keep it attached. Now I need to know if it left anything besides the bodies. Any residue at all. It’s excellent at camouflage and stealth because it relies mostly on its human victims, and we are still developing spells that can detect anything in human flesh.”

“I can feel it. I felt it earlier, that’s why I was here to begin with, because I was curious. It’s like an odd prickling at the edges of my senses,” Nicolas tried to explain, his eyes not quite looking at John as he tried to feel for anything unusual. “I’m not—you would have been better served picking another familiar, Monsieur. I was never taught how to use the Mind Gifts.” He said the last word almost sneeringly, as if he hated gifts.

“So you have no bad habits to unlearn,” John replied, to the boy’s surprise. “It’s not very complicated. Whatever your strongest sense is, imagine using that to feel on every possible plane of existence and dimension. Hear what makes no sound. See what hasn’t become visible yet. Sometimes you can see better around something that isn’t there than when you look directly at it.”

“That sounds like rubbish,” Nicolas remarked, but he closed his eyes and cast out his hearing. He could feel the gibbering song of a demon at once, and it snarled at being discovered. It was living in the stoppered sewers below the street, unable to emerge because of the wards John had already placed at either end of the alley. John gave a relieved sigh when Nicki informed him of this, and drew another ward that would create a wall around part of the corpses, with only one entrance and exit. Nicolas hummed softly, accidentally creating a scent for the demon to follow, a melody for it to feed on. Unheeding, while John cast more wards and traps, Nicolas hummed absently as he idly cast his “hearing” further afield.

He swarmed over Paris, through whispers and arguments and thoughts and discussions and histories and found that for once it wasn’t overwhelming him, wasn’t shoving itself into his face and down his throat and ears and trying to remake him into whatever it was he found. And then he brushed past the Theatre unthinkingly and Armand’s presence there had sealed it so tightly that Nicki’s mere tracery of its edges brought the coven master out, his presence searching and scenting like a deadly predator. In mere seconds he could feel the barbs latch onto him and he wrenched himself away, letting out a choked off scream in real life as he stumbled backwards, his hands out in front of him before he covered his head in his arms, falling hard against the cobbles and rolling himself into a ball.

“Easy! Easy!” John soothed at once, rushing to the vampire who was now cowering against the curb, practicing his psychic senses one second and rebounding into a tight terrified child the next. “What happened, eh? What’s wrong? Nicolas, answer me.”

“Keep away!” The vampire sobbed, to John’s surprise, while his hands fisted in John’s coat, tugging him closer.

“Well which is it, child?” he found himself asking, his hand going to the vampire’s back and rubbing it soothingly. He felt like a boy at these times, a child too young and innocent for this kind of business. What could this kid know of vampires and evil and blood and battle beyond what he had read in storybooks?

“Keep HIM away!” The creature hissed, digging his face into John’s coat as if he could hide there. “He can’t find me! He can’t find me!”

“Easy, he won’t, all right? You belong to me now, remember? No master can claim you.”

“He can. He already did,” Nicolas said hollowly, but he had stilled, no longer taking heaving sobbing breaths. John was sure there would be vampire tears on his coat come morning, but he could perhaps salvage that into some ingredients.

“You need rest. You did well for your first time,” John told him honestly, taking him by the elbows and pulling him unresistingly to his feet. “Now chin up.” There were dried blood tracks down both of the vampire’s cheeks, and John tried to ignore the macabre look this gave the boy. “We’ll have a night tomorrow, but the sun’ll be up soon for you. I have a cellar I’m renting from a landlady. We can put you up there. Don’t try to cast your mind out anymore tonight.” Nicolas nodded, subdued, and followed John home.

“Who is he?” John asked, trying to be casual as he opened the door to the cellar. The boy was already drowsy, now that it was nearing five o’clock in the morning, and he was sluggish and slow to respond. He raised his eyes to John’s face. “The one you’re afraid of, the one I will keep away from you. And I will.” He suddenly felt a surge of protectiveness for the boy who wasn’t the creature he thought, who was singularly so different from other vampires, at once angry and strong and weak and fearful, and impulsively he added, “I promise. I won’t let him hurt you anymore.” He didn’t know why he promised. He was starting to think of the creature less as his thrall or familiar and more as a person, a boy, a young man delayed.

“You’re a liar, Johnny Aberdeen,” Nicolas said, but it was in his own voice with his own intonations, his strange sober way of talking as if everything they discussed was serious enough for him to care for it with deliberation, like a delicate bird or plant one cultivates. “I’m not a child. I don’t need bedtime stories.” He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, and seemed to survey the sparseness of the place, the wine bottles stored up, the esoteric magical items shoved haphazardly on the storage shelves. He peered at the books stacked up on a working table, even the ones in Latin and Greek, and looked back up at John with his candle.

They looked at each other in silence, both filled with uncertain thoughts. Nicolas swayed a little, and he took up a seat on a bench John had pushed up against the wall, looking grateful for the rest.

“Do you need a pallet? A light?” John asked, trying to be at least a little hospitable. “I have a more or less empty chest you can use if you need the privacy to sleep.”

“No chests,” his new familiar replied wearily, his head nodding once as he struggled to keep his eyes open. He was slumping, and John wondered at being one of the few mortals to witness how a vampire fell into his daytime rest. “Don’t…don’t come near.” His eyelids drooped closed, his fingers stilling and bringing his tiredness into marked contrast with his faint twitchiness and trembling. It was the only time John had ever seen him and would ever see him at peace, in that death sleep.

“I promise,” John whispered softly, and shut the door when the vampire did not reply.

 

He stayed away the following week, not wanting to supply Eleni with more evidence for her suspicions, not when they were so fresh and more accurate than ever. The woman paid attention and remarked on such things, and she was more than capable of unnerving even Armand at times, though he would never permit her to discover this. His first arrival in Paris all those years ago as their new devoted coven master had found her most inquisitive and perhaps even grasping, for she had led the coven in his absence with Felix as the devout enforcer.

Nicolas for his part remained mute, unable to direct rehearsals, seemingly more and more obsolete. He stared at the empty expanse of pages before him as the ink dried on the nib and Felix periodically took it from his unmoving fingers and wet the tip again. The silence was suffocating in his little room, before so full of music and notes. Felix could hardly stand it. He took to caressing Nicolas' statuesque face, trying to coax some expression or life from his eyes and his mouth, but not even a scattered series of kisses on his eyelashes roused him. He moved mechanically as if he had just been turned, feeding when Felix directed, even entering his coffin with none of the claustrophobic fear and panicked protest of earlier.

Two weeks later, Felix finished dragging a body into the Seine and failed to find any trace of Nicolas when he turned around. As for Gabrielle, Nicolas had made no sound, left no evidence, of his departure or his kidnap. There had been no change to his condition. He had simply vanished!

Fearing it was another of Nicki's tricks, or that perhaps he had finally broken and gone to end his miserable existence, Felix was loathe to alarm the rest of the coven into panic and drive Nicolas further away. He tried to scent for that strange desperate bright burning mind, that electric smell of thoughts whirling so quickly their bearer sought to flee from his own inescapable mind. He had tracked Nicolas before this way, skirting the edge of chaos, and he had hours before the sun would rise. Nicolas had said it was Felix's own built up immunity from his time with the fervent manics in the monastery that permitted him above others to seek out his mind without becoming lost in it. Delphine had tried it once. She would not speak of it, but she spoke softer towards and her attentions were far less ardent upon the concertmaster. His swift, erratic movements and behavior during one of his fits were no longer alarming to her, and indeed she was no longer afraid of him, and instead sat patiently as he wore himself out with the other orchestra members, and stared at her sheet music. Felix wanted to pull no other member into the same intimacies with Nicki's mind, and so he began to search energetically.

Meanwhile, the streets were gloomed in shadow and Nicolas felt himself waking with every step, every grudging slog of his legs through the suddenly thick air around him. The alleyways and streets bent and sheltered him but they suffocated as well, and like a bird he quickly grew disoriented in the maze of streets that was Paris then, the sky blocked from his view as he followed the dark tendrils he thought he saw whispering through the cobbled. He ought to get back, somewhere, he was supposed to tell someone, he couldn't recall. But here was something new and the delicious dread that seeped into his bones and made his teeth chatter was altogether too visceral and real to be from from the Master. He still couldn't didn't want to invoke the name. It was too much, too fearful, too strange. You thought of it, Eleanor had mentioned it, and He had come.

The stench of human was growing stronger. Death here recently, but families living here too, that stink of offal and human grime and filth mixed with fountain water and children's milk. He stumbled once, disturbed a sleeping mortal covered in dirt and rags, and drew back, then forward in alarm at how human it looked.

"Was I one of you once?" He muttered, watching as the mortal's eyes grew large and awake.

"G-get away from me!" It shrieked, tossing up its rags and scrambling backwards.

"Shh, you don't have to be afraid," Nicolas said with a low laugh, pretending to look around. "We're alone here, aren't we?" He reached out with a pale white hand and thumbed the ancient mortal's cheek and ran his fingers over the wrinkles in his face. He would never be this old, never scar from Amiens, never have that wound on his back he felt when the weather was cold, never hurt on his shoulder from when-- "Remy..." Nicolas whispered, thinking of the fight in the stable over the pony when the ancient man was five and people still dressed in flouncy clothes in the reign of the Sun King.

"Get away from me, boy! I wouldn't be touched! He said!" The man took a deep coughing breath, frightened by this strange youth.

Nicolas frowned. "Why are you so afraid of me? I've done nothing."

"You can't fool me. Demon. Monster. Trickster." The man spat at Nicolas' feet, making the violinist draw back. "Killer of children."

"No, not me. I saw something else here," Nicolas said. He made a decision. "Who are you waiting for? What are you bait for? Tell me!"

"He said you couldn't touch me!" The man screeched, trying to kick as Nicki's strong implacable grip lifted him by the lapels of his filthy coat.

"Well he was wrong!" Nicolas snarled, losing his patience. His curiosity would only come so far. He leaned in to bring the mortal's death close, only to catch a glimpse of a yellow pin flashing as it emerged in the half-light from the man's coat.

"Begone!" The man yelled, stabbing it at Nicki's chest. It was as if he had thrown a spear through Nicki's heart instead, and Nicolas gasped at the pain, dropping the mortal as he clutched at his wound. His hands scrabbled for the yellow pin, but the pressure worsened as did the pain, and he could hear his teeth grind together as he fell to his knees, clutching his chest. Dear God, the pain! It was nothing like he had felt, not even when, not even the, the, not even--Nicolas opened his eyes and tried to grab a loose cobble, but the darkness was clouding into his vision and he felt the world compress around him, his body pulled in a million shivering directions and stretched until he fit again.

And then the pain stopped as soon as it began, leaving him crouched over himself on his hands and knees, gasping for air he didn't need.

"Oh fuck, Renard you've gone and bollocksed it up again, haven't you? Who the fuck is this?" He heard someone say angrily. It was in English, and he opened his eyes to the cold large stone slabs of a basement floor. His hands did a crude inspection of his body and could not move the yellow pin, in the shape of an 8 pointed star, stuck bloodlessly through the linen of his shirt into his chest. He looked up and through his disheveled curls he could see a mortal with dark blond hair, the profile of his face almost regal but for a slight crudeness around the eyes, a predatory hardness that gave Nicolas pause. He was dressed in dark brown, nicer cloth than the usual commoner but broadcloth nonetheless, and the sleeves of his frock coat were stained with ash. He smelled strongly of tobacco and Nicolas felt a fresh pang of grief and regret.

"Jesus, it's all right, boy, how could he mix you up with a Orphalthian I don't know. Come on out of the circle. I can almost smell your fear-“ The man gave a pause and fixed steel blue eyes at him, his gaze intense and piercing like a hawk's. "But you're not frightened. Why?" He left the grimorium at his worktable, a brittle text with thick thick rough leather covers that had to be bolted together. Nicolas couldn’t hear what the leather was from, whether it was the scream of cattle or humans or sheep or something else. He squatted down to meet Nicolas at eye level where he lay in the centre of the magic circle he had chalked into the floor, and squinted his eyes for a second to see Beyond as well.

The young man was just a boy, really, pale with fright or shock or whatever that smell was, like finely polished wood and a warm hearth, with large dark eyes that returned his gaze with a sensible intelligence that reminded him of so many of the young students in Paris, full of hope, ready to throw themselves into the thresher of revolution and martyrdom, if the rumors were to be believed. Whispers in the air spoke of blood. His cheeks and pointed chin were smooth and free of hair, he looked that young, and the man’s eyes traced the innocence of that smallish mouth and he thought of sinful things that made him strike his thigh with his fist. The motion made the youth draw back in alarm, then suspicion.

It was such a calculated act that the man scratched at his hair shirt through the linen and tilted his head. Then he saw it. All the ghosts screaming. He went very still, and peered again, and he saw the ghostly blue shades of all the people the boy had ever hunted or killed, standing behind him, waiting. A girl reached out, her bloodied hand barely brushing tousled curls that looked soft and yet silken, as if they had been very finely shaved from a bar of chocolate by an army of small mice. And the man knew the boy was not pale with fright or shock or anger or anything. The boy was pale because the boy was not human.

He took a step back from the circle, and the creature watched him, its expression never changing from that neutral gaze save for the occasional twitch that made it seem like he caught something at the edge of his hearing and could not help but give it attention. It was an odd nervous tic and the man had never seen it before. Someone had dressed him like a lawyer or a cleric, one of those young ambitious youth filing in and out of the Sorbonne and the fashionable offices. He was in all black, the only white on him his conservative linen cravat and his silk stockings. The creature’s body was slim, and the man could sense the hidden power in the toned muscles and the firm, supple calves. But it still reminded him of having caught a magpie in a net. He’d never seen a vampire so lost before. They were usually self-righteous devils, arrogant to the extreme about a mage’s impunity and presumption.

“Should I- -,” the youth said haltingly, as if unused to speech, and indeed his voice seemed to grow used to volume as it grew less shy and hoarse. “Should I be afraid?”

“You weren’t what I was looking for, but-,“ the mortal paused. “You could be useful.”

“Sir, I have had my fill of being ‘useful’, if you’ll pardon my disagreeableness,” the young man said with surprising civility, picking himself off the floor at last with a lithe athleticism that made the man cringe again, then wonder where the creature had come from. The young man was straightening his clothes and had finally noticed the chalk outlines on the floor. “What’s this? Are you a magician? Were you going to summon a flock of doves and received me instead?” The wry smile was a surprise and despite himself the man found his lips curling to return it.

“Renard, that’s the poxy stinking gentleman who accosted you, was supposed to pin this on the Orphalthian. So you’re half right,” the man said. “He’s been worse for the drink lately, on account of the misadventure with the lost souls from Carpathia, but at least his Sight didn’t miss a supernatural creature when he found one.”

“What do you mean?” The words were said in one quick rush. “I hope your words do not intend the accusation they imply. Surely you do not truly believe you are really some sort of sorcerer, an enchanter or mage of old tales? You seem far too-“

“Grubby? Bourgeois?” The man asked with a raise of his eyebrow, causing the young man to change his incredulity to one of skepticism. “Try stepping over that line. Go on. Or removing the pin. You think you know everything. The youth of these times.”

“Listen asshole,” the boy said, beautiful in his anger as his brow furrowed and he raised a finger towards the man. The man held his breath, briefly mesmerized, as if watching a beautiful but deadly bonfire that coaxed him towards its heat. The young man took a step forward, but it was as if he had struck an invisible wall made of electricity that gripped him and shook him until he was but a blur of pain. He cried out in a mixture of shock and surprise, his muscles seizing, and to the mortal’s surprise, persisted, splayed fingers clenched like claws as they scraped against the barrier. Alarmed, the mage ran to his grimoire, but his fears were needless when seconds later the boy dropped to the floor, still within the confines of the chalk circles, panting for air as the twitching in his limbs subsided.

“Do you believe me now?” He asked, trying to sound smug as he walked slowly up to the circle until he was very close to the chalk.

“You…” The boy panted, looking up at him and then pushing himself to his knees, pausing, then to his feet. A finely made finger traced the edges of the yellow star in his chest, but the creature did not take his eyes off of the mortal. “Who are you? What is this?”

“John Aberdeen, at your service,” said the mortal with a small bow, though that was hardly his real full name should any other mage want to use it in a spell. “And that is a pin meant for capturing an Orphalthian, although I will make a note that it works just as well on vampires in keeping a preternatural creature inside the bounds of this circle of binding.”

“H-how?” asked the creature, thoroughly confused. John thought he saw a lip curl into a snarl, but while those fine hands shook, they did not rise to bang against the perimeter and incur more pain.

“I sympathize with your concern, but what I am really quite interested in is where your lair is, and if there are others like you. Ah, and if you have sensed a creature such as the Orphalthian,” John stated, going to his grimoire and picking up a quill. He made several notes on this particular encounter as the creature seethed inside the circle.

“You fucker,” it said heatedly. He had not expected it to be so versed in modern language, to possess such emotion and to create such a facsimile of humanity. “You have no idea what you’re doing. This was your dumb fuckup and it’s my bad luck I ended up here.”

“My, we are modern, aren’t we?” John asked, amused as it began to run its fingers through its hair. He thumbed through a few pages and found the incantation he needed, and the gestures. Repeating them wordlessly under his breath, he raised his hands and gestured at the creature in the youth’s body. “Perhaps you simply need a little incentive. I don’t know what you did to get that poor boy’s body, but I’m sure you still feel what I can do to it.”

As soon as the creature fell to the ground from the needle pain spell, however, which had tormented dozens of others—including on one notable occasion, the Crown Prince of Bohemia—into providing some of their innermost secrets, the screaming laughter began. John was so surprised he simply stared as the pain and the laughter continued, his limbs jerking and twisting against it. The pain was supposed to be unbearable. Men harder than this callow youth, grizzled war veterans, had screamed and sobbed and shat themselves and begged for their mothers, at the same time.

With a flick of his wrist, he ended it, leaving the boy panting on the floor, staring at the dark wooden beams on the ceiling while the occasional sobbing laugh escaped from him. It was as if he couldn’t help it.

It suddenly made John feel sorry.

He lowered his hands and knelt by the circle, watching the broken boy, wondering what the answer was and what possible question he would need to ask. He had seen this before, in old mages gone sour. Too many gibbering things from the oily darkness between worlds had come and found them, too many seconds in hell had imprinted moving images inside the cave of their minds that they could never stop seeing. They treated torture and death and pain as follies, meaningless pastimes in this world, but all the same, the sane part of them suffered alongside the twisted thing that found it absurd. The laugh John had heard did not belong on such a young boy, despite the immortal demonic and evil creature that inhabited it.

“What happened to you?” John asked softly in wonder. He had fought demons and witches and other mages. He had battled the devil and possibly Satan himself. He had resurrected the dead and tricked succubi and drunk of potions and liquids forbidden to man. It was folly to think he could not feel all the more for it. Even the lowest imps of hell and the most indulgent dukes of that eternal darkness avoided unwilling torture and pain, had avoided this if they could help it, preferring to trick their way out of an answer.

“Let me go,” the boy croaked, holding his middle as if he hurt still.

“Tell me your name,” John said urgently. “Where do you sleep?"

"No, just leave me be," whispered the youth, beginning to turn away. John tried again.

"Who was your maker?”

“FUCK! YOU!” The boy suddenly screamed at him, making him bowl backwards in alarm and land on his rear. “FUCK YOU, you English dog!” This he said in English, to John’s surprise, making him laugh. “You think this is funny?” His accent was very faint, and it gave John a shiver of delight.

“You’re so human!” John exclaimed, slapping his thigh with a laugh, no longer alarmed or concerned. This demon was clever, all right.

“You’re an idiot,” said the young man in disgust, in French again, and drew his knees up close to his chest and hugged them. Faint giggles escaped him, like hiccoughs torn from him, and he gulped against them as if in pain.

“Most likely, but I’m not the one stuck in a magic circle being laughed at now, am I, mate?” John asked, lighting his pipe. “Hope you don’t mind. Not as if it’ll kill you.” The boy said nothing, and refused to look at John. “Ah, the silent treatment then? What’s wrong with you? Possess a defective model?”

The boy turned his face to him with an incredulous look, then made a face of absolute disgust. It was like watching masks shift across a beautiful statue, and John held his breath as he watched. “You know absolutely nothing,” he whispered, then buried his face in his arms, shielding himself from view in a tight bundle.

“Suit yourself, mate. You’ll be begging for blood soon enough, and when I’m tired of entertaining you, I’ll just open the curtains,” said John, leaving the pipe lit just out of the vampire’s reach. He forced himself not to look back as he walked away, picked up the grimoire, then took it with him as he left and closed the door.

The vampire made no sound the following night, giving John the silent treatment, but by the third night his chest seemed to be heaving as he struggled to breathe smoothly.

“All right, mate?” John asked.

“I’m not your mate,” the vampire hissed, and John was surprised to see him look up with eyes that were no more bloodshot than his own. Apart from a marked gauntness, he looked no less like the boy John had first captured.

“It occurs to me that you might be thirsty,” John mused, picking up the pipe and lighting a match beneath it. He took note of the way the vampire’s nostrils flared, and he seemed to clutch at himself a little harder the closer John approached him. John could have bounced a pin off the tension in the tight ball he’d made himself. The giggles had diminished the second night, but the confusion had begun then too, vague answers about where they were. The boy forgot occasionally who John was, or what was happening, gaps in the conversation where he seemed to listen for something. Only the anger and hate for John could channel his focus.

“What is it you even want?” The boy asked. Then he added, in English, just for John’s benefit, “fucker,” under his breath. John gave a sharp bark of laughter, startling the creature’s shot nerves and making him jump, then hug himself even harder.

“I want a name. I want a place. I want the rest of your coven in your lair. And then I want to smoke all of you out into the sun,” John said with a smile.

“Oh,” replied the boy, looking off into the distance. “You could have told me you wanted to kill them all. I can help you.”

“What?” John asked, surprised.

“I hate them,” replied the boy, but then shuddered as John took a step towards him. “I c-can’t…”

“Hungry, are you?” John asked, putting out the smoke in his pipe. It captivated the young man’s gaze, the smoke drifting through the air. “Oi!” He waved the pipe before the young man's eyes to snatch his attention back.

“What are you doing here?” asked the young man with suddenly narrowed eyes.

“You said you hated your coven. That you would help me slay them,” John prompted hesitantly.

“What? Who are you?” the boy asked, looking bewildered. The moment had been lost. "Wh-where is this?" He unfolded, trying to look around himself.

“Look,” John said, kneeling down and attempting to be kind. “You’re hungry, aren’t you? Hard to concentrate when you’re starving, I’ve been there.”

“I’m tired,” whined the creature, burying his face against his knees again. He gave a muffled sigh. “So many voices. So many, just, everything dying. All the time.”

“I’ve a few ghosts myself,” John agreed, thinking of the friends he’d betrayed, the family he’d abandoned.

“I just want to leave. I want to not, I want, I just want. No one will ever understand,” replied the boy, his voice muffled. “I want to not want. I want to give up. I am so tired of fighting. Aren’t you tired, Johnny?”

“Yeah,” John said, surprising himself with this admission. Never give the enemy any show of weakness. Never let…well, he was having trouble seeing this lad as anything more than a lowly imp on the totem pole of being royally screwed over in life. Something wrong had happened to him before he was yanked into John’s circle. He’d tried some other torture spells. None of them had really made any effect beyond causing a shrieking laugh that forced John to his knees and nearly deafened his eardrums. The boy was impervious to that sort of incentive. If John were completely honest with himself, he would confess that there was an almost sinful way in which his victim threw himself into the pain and simply drank it up, writhing and screaming out as his body sank into the depredations of the spell. Almost as if, no, but, demons loved inflicting pain on others. They didn't relish it themselves. And in any case, the creature seemed to dislike it. No, it was more that he pretended to embrace it very well.

And he still got no closer to the Orphalthian, and two more bodies had been found the same way, their ears bleeding. Renard had fled town for Lyons, pursued by gambling creditors, and John was left with no assistant and an untamed pet vampire. He needed to make another move soon.

"Wh-mnh," the boy mumbled, picking at his own cuticles and seeking out invisible crumbs on the floor. "Hmnh."

"What's your name?" John asked softly and as neutrally as possible, watching the boy drift in and out.

"Nic," he mumbled softly, and John almost thought he'd misheard. He'd never answered before. The boy twitched, shook his head as if to drive away a fly, and in the half light of the candle he did look tired. John had never met a tired vampire before. Most of them were busy trying to kill him. The boy shook his head to himself, then bent his head to his left and closed his eyes as if listening for something.

"Nic?" John asked tentatively, and the boy raised his head as if being woken from a reverie, blinking sleepily. "Nicolas? Are you in there?"

"Wh-why?" The creature who called itself Nic asked, and covered his face with those fine hands. They looked almost skeletal in the light, and John realized the vampire was starving.

"Are you hungry?" He asked, and held himself in place as the vampire's face popped back up into a desperate yearning, a burning look in his dark large and hollow eyes as he glared at John.

"Musn't, mustn't, I was---I was supposed to tell!" The boy cried, looking worried as he began to wring his hands. John scrambled back to his grimoire as the vampire grew more distressed, and before he would start to frenzy, cast a calming trance upon him. The quiet was instant, and he looked faintly stunned instead, walking in less of a fever dream and more like a zombie John had met in the colonies.

"Who do you have to tell?"

“Before the cobbles. Before the lash. I’m so hungry. Hungry. You smell rich and bad for me."

"Hah. I am probably. Never want to drink a magician's blood. You never know where it's been."

"Hell. And Anna. And Elizabeth. And Georgiana. Ah and George and Harold."

"Wh-what?" John went almost as pale as his prisoner. "Did you read my mind?! How do you--"

"You're a bloody bastard, Johnny Crenshaw Aberdeen. All you can magic is how to use someone until they're dead!" It was Elizabeth's accent coming from that rich young man's tenor and it made John stagger back for a moment. He began the incantation for an exorcism, then stopped when he realized the vampire was starting to shake off the trance.

He scrambled quickly for the silver ring he had prepared in advance, and cast a spell over it as his pushed through his own barrier. It was delicate and fine, about a half inch thick, attached to a series of links that cascaded through his fingers, and he quickly noosed it around the vampire's neck, cinching it snugly before locking it with a spell. He was just in time to be knocked to the floor by the vampire's arm as it broke from the hypnotism, and felt the wooden floorboards slam into his shoulder blades hard. The vampire straddled him and yanked his face to one side, exposing his neck. John supposed he ought to be terrified, looking up between the cold fingers pushing his face down to the feral focused gaze of the hunter above him. Instead his own hand remembered what to do, looped the chain around his fist and yanked hard, magnifying the force of the gesture and pulling the vampire off of him by the neck. The expression of surprise was priceless and John found himself laughing as the vampire felt tentatively and quickly around the ring for the clasp, surprised when he could not disengage it.

"How do you get it off?" The boy snarled, yanking John to his feet in one hand by the lapels of his brown frock coat. He was furious, his brow knitted and his hands trembling.

"It's a very old spell, and so it has survived for a very long time. You can't even put me in danger to break the spell. I must release you of my own free will," John said smugly.

"You--argh!" growled the youthful student, shoving his hands through his hair and tousling his curls into a part. He yanked at the chain a few times, but it held fast even as he scratched rivulets into his own neck, ones that bled and healed almost instantly. Almost. He needed to feed.

"Hungry, are you?" John asked, eyeing him carefully as he packed up his grimoire.

"You keep asking me that. Not that it matters from one brutish master to another," grumbled the young man, stuffing his hands into his coat pockets sullenly. He was unreasonably charming when he was angry, and John found it hard to think of him as simply a creature or a demon as he had other vampires.

"Who was your previous master?" John asked urgently, giving the chain a faint toss.

"Fuck off, I'm not a horse!" The boy said irritably, then gave him a sidealong look. "You really are just a simple beast of the Third Estate, aren't you?"

"Oh no, I've captured a politician," John groaned in jest.

"I wouldn't have expected you to know of political theory."

"I know how to read, Monsieur. Whatever you might think of me, I am not unlearned," John replied. The boy appeared to consider this. It was altogether a different demeanor from the hunger crazed monster of before.

"What do you intend with my imprisonment, if you have not exterminated me yet?" He asked thoughtfully.

"I thought we'd come to an agreement. I require an assistant," the Mage said almost proudly, as if he had arrived at a particularly magnanimous solution.

"An assistant? Not a-" the vampire began, then stopped himself, growing serious again. He sneered. "What would such assistant duties require? You would have me bound to your service and your children's service for all eternity, like some unholy djinn?"

"God you'd be annoying if that were the case," John snorted, surprising the vampire. A look of innocent surprise passed over the boy's face and John laughed with the patience and amusement of someone with years Nicolas didn’t and never would have, no matter how long he lived.

"You can't even compel me to perform tasks. You know the torture doesn't work on me," the vampire said bitterly, and he hugged his arms to himself.

"No, it doesn't, does it?" John agreed. "You'd rather die first." He raised his fingers and tilted the boy's chin up, only to be rewarded by a rapid drawing back, a snarl and a hiss of genuine offense.

"Don't touch me!"

"Of course not," John replied, dropping his hand. He looked askance at the boy as he gestured into the air, turning some pages in his grimoire before he traced invisible sigils that made the vampire stiffen and look directly at John. His lips parted in a soft O of shock and a moan escaped his throat. It was full of longing and pain and John wasn't sure if he should continue. Tear tracks were flowing down the vampire's cheeks, red and dripping, and as John continued the spell, the boy fell to his knees, barely catching himself with the heels of his hands. John finished the incantation, swiping a finishing symbol across the final sigil, and the vampire gave a soft sigh of relief and resignation, his entire posture sagging and collapsing in on itself.

"All right then?" John asked, as the boy caught his breath. The eyes that looked back up at him were filled with fear. "If you do what I say, I'll let you see it again. You can feel what it's like."

"H-how did you know?" The voice was soft, as if afraid to break the spell and its lingering warmth. There had been light. And warmth. And love. And he was not alone.

"Don't you think I've been there, know what I stand to lose?" John asked bitterly. "Nothing more than a guest, but there long enough to know the bargain I was striking."

"What bargain was that? What unholy creature tempted you with Heaven?"

"Souls for demons. I must balance my ledger."

"And you can provide this, this illusion--"

"It is no illusion. It is much like the clearing of a window all around one's person. A secret window. Only one other mage ever knew of its existence, and he died young as many mages do. Were any denizen of that heavenly sphere to discover it, they would have surely repaired the fault," Crenshaw explained.

"So it's real. It's real," Nicolas repeated to himself, looking off. “You’re real, I’m real, it’s real.”

"Now then. Who was your previous master? Who do we have to contend with? Who will try to reclaim you?”

"Are you going to compel me to answer, if I am to be your vassal and slave now?" The young man snarled, spiky with suspicion once more.

"I could," John said with a shrug, as he cast an illusion to dissolve the appearance of the chain into no more than a shadow. "My preference lies towards less painful methods. I would have us be if not fellow men or humans, then subjects under God. Compelling a homunculus, conjuration, or slave twists and pulls the essence of their being, and I have found that pleasure and loyalty produce such better results."

"Even when they're a lie?" The boy asked, and smiled unkindly when Crenshaw flinched.

"Come. I need you to find a demon for me. It's been eating women and children and it is styling itself as something Fortequeue's Bestiary calls the Orphalthian,"

"And how am I to find a demon, o wise master Mage?" The boy asked mockingly. "I am but a poor servant unversed in magic, bound by a hedge wizard who cannot even afford an evening coat.” They looked at each other, surprised by their shared amusement at this insult delivered without heat, without conviction, more with the laziness of someone feeling out the borders of tolerance.

"Preternatural beings are naturally attuned to others," John explained. "You'd be able to sense another creature poaching on your territory. And this loyal coat was tailored for me by a mystic on the tea mountains of Formosa! It protects me from all manner of incantations.”

“And from good fashion sense as well, I see,” Nicolas replied wryly, folding his arms and leaning on the table to look up at John.

“You’re a cheeky monkey aren’t you?” John asked with a smile. “Just how old are you?”

“Twenty-nine, if I were still mortal,” the boy answered truthfully, to John’s surprise. The silver ring he wore had a milky white stone set into it, and it glowed blue before fading. “So that’s how it works.” The boy tilted his head at it to inspect it. He shook his head, suddenly, distracted, and hugged himself tighter. He seemed to suddenly thin before John’s eyes, his blue veins growing darker, and his eyes bulged briefly. His eyelashes were very fine and they fluttered rapidly as a faint twitching overcame him.

“You need blood,” John observed, ignoring the boy’s roll of eyes. He nodded to himself. “Come. You shall be as an Angel of Death in the sick wards. A bringer of hope for those who have forgotten its taste. I’ll not have you steal any more lives than necessary.” With a faint jerk of his ring finger he bid the boy follow him, and found it a surprisingly easy way to keep the hungering vampire focused. The creature did not seem to mind the chain now that the hunger distracted him, and walked like an automaton through the nearby hospital where nuns in the large wimples of Breton ghosted from bed to bed, checking on their fevered charges.

“So sour,” the boy said, hugging himself again, but his eyes were huge and he seemed to strain against an invisible yoke. He looked past John, his gaze unfocused but pleading, and John gave a nod towards a man abed, just entering the middle of his years but coughing up black that would poison him before the night was out. With a soft sigh the boy alighted with his knees on the edge of the sickbed, and gathered the briefly struggling man into his arms. It was quick, and John watched, fascinated, as the man’s hands tightened around the boy’s shoulders until they relaxed, the two of them falling back down into bed together. A shudder passed through the vampire and he gave a great gulp of air as he surfaced, flinging himself back from the cooling corpse beside him. The man had died peacefully, his neck wounds bloodless, but there was something wrong with the vampire that John had never seen before.

The blood was filling him out, yes, returning him to that preternatural perfection, removing the gauntness and replacing it with a leanness he associated with youthful energy. The boy looked barely twenty, after all, and if he had been a vampire for almost a decade, he must have been in trouble the night he was taken unawares by Remy, of all people.

“Boy,” John whispered urgently, and slapped the vampire on the face. “Nic!” The creature shivered, and his eyes were so large it looked like he was floating on opium. He dragged a lazy finger down John’s scraggly cheek as if feeling the texture for the first time. Perhaps he had never grown whiskers. He looked so young.

“Bon soir, John,” he whispered, and to John’s surprise, smiled a smile of simple joy, of a market dance and an apple tree and the warm closeness of amber sunlight in a dusty workshop on a cold autumn day. These he saw in his mind and when a well-dressed wealthy boy entered the scenes he looked like Nicolas but younger and he saw John and offered up something in his hand with a charming smile. John stepped towards him closer, entranced by this boy and his soft somber light, and looked down into one palm and reeled backwards because it was nothing more than a bloody pulsing heart, dripping red with each beat, and John clapped a hand over his own mouth to muffle the strangled scream.

“Get up!” he hissed urgently, and yanked the confused creature to his feet. “What the hell was that?” The boy looked at him as if awakening, and John realized he had no idea what John was talking about.

“Unhand me!” The creature demanded, taking his arm back and straightening his clothing to rights with the offended air of an aristocrat.

“Are you full?” John asked, and the creature frowned but nodded, looking at the other beds longingly. “Fine. Then we’re going.”

No words passed between them as they left the damp coughs and struggles of the free charity hospital and returned to the street where Remy had captured Nicolas. The prickliness that tickled Nicki’s senses from before was now back in full force, and he felt the rottenness of death pass over him.

“There’s been another,” he said, suddenly realizing what it was they were looking for.

“I thought you didn’t know—“

“I’m not stupid.” An irritated look. “One has only to find corresponding patterns. Child’s play. It is a wonder they permitted you to be a sorcerer.”

“Mage, you little twit. Now what’ve you found? Are we in the right place?”

“Surprisingly, and you’ve a fresh kill tonight if that’s helpful,” Nicolas replied, strolling down the small street casually with his hands in his pockets like any gentleman. The blood had been good for him, and something about the way he could converse with John was keeping him focused. John followed his elegant figure, his own hands fingering talismans and amulets in his endless pockets, wondering what it was they would find.

“Jesus Mary!” The vampire suddenly stepped backwards, running into John, and clutched a corner and retched. John turned away, knowing there was nothing he could do to prevent himself from ending the dread that now rose in him, and faced the scene that had made a vampire sick with fear and disgust.

A child and a woman, perhaps her mother, were deftly hidden behind a few old boxes, perhaps once used as a shelter from the elements by the city’s poor. They were…open. More precisely, their ribcages had been turned into what looked like a xylophone, joined by what perhaps was a coccyx, it being hard for John to tell in the dark. Vampires could see in much dimmer light, and John conjured a magelight in his hand. What he saw made it shiver a little, but he kept it alight. He had seen so much worse, and it brought a grim set to his jaw. He could hear the vampire sniffling outside, and wondered what kind of evil creature could find sympathy and fear with human suffering like this. The child’s arm was resting on her mother’s, her face in repose, but her entrails had been pulled out and tightened on her outstretched arm, turning it into a macabre harp.

“Orphalthian, you called it,” the vampire said behind him. John turned away from the awful sight of those empty eyes staring, removed from their sockets and placed inside the cavity where their hearts used to be. “From Orpheus?” His voice was dry and hoarse.

“Yes,” John said, and they looked at each other in silence, perhaps to bear witness to the two who sat there. “When it’s done it flesh crafts its victims into musical instruments. Minor demon of the seventh circle, sixth ring.”

“I don’t know what that means. But you will not require a silver ring to obtain my aid in this matter,” said the vampire solemnly, and John looked at him more carefully. He was paler now, and the street was clean, no indication that he had vomited, if vampires could vomit, but he seemed still to be shaken and weak from the sight. “I would find a special pleasure in bringing it to justice.” John thought he felt the vision of an acrobat, a lithe and beautiful silhouette, but Nicolas had said nothing.

“Excuse me if I still choose to keep it attached. Now I need to know if it left anything besides the bodies. Any residue at all. It’s excellent at camouflage and stealth because it relies mostly on its human victims, and we are still developing spells that can detect anything in human flesh.”

“I can feel it. I felt it earlier, that’s why I was here to begin with, because I was curious. It’s like an odd prickling at the edges of my senses,” Nicolas tried to explain, his eyes not quite looking at John as he tried to feel for anything unusual. “I’m not—you would have been better served picking another familiar, Monsieur. I was never taught how to use the Mind Gifts.” He said the last word almost sneeringly, as if he hated gifts.

“So you have no bad habits to unlearn,” John replied, to the boy’s surprise. “It’s not very complicated. Whatever your strongest sense is, imagine using that to feel on every possible plane of existence and dimension. Hear what makes no sound. See what hasn’t become visible yet. Sometimes you can see better around something that isn’t there than when you look directly at it.”

“That sounds like rubbish,” Nicolas remarked, but he closed his eyes and cast out his hearing. He could feel the gibbering song of a demon at once, and it snarled at being discovered. It was living in the stoppered sewers below the street, unable to emerge because of the wards John had already placed at either end of the alley. John gave a relieved sigh when Nicki informed him of this, and drew another ward that would create a wall around part of the corpses, with only one entrance and exit. Nicolas hummed softly, accidentally creating a scent for the demon to follow, a melody for it to feed on. Unheeding, while John cast more wards and traps, Nicolas hummed absently as he idly cast his “hearing” further afield.

He swarmed over Paris, through whispers and arguments and thoughts and discussions and histories and found that for once it wasn’t overwhelming him, wasn’t shoving itself into his face and down his throat and ears and trying to remake him into whatever it was he found. And then he brushed past the Theatre unthinkingly and Armand’s presence there had sealed it so tightly that Nicki’s mere tracery of its edges brought the coven master out, his presence searching and scenting like a deadly predator. In mere seconds he could feel the barbs latch onto him and he wrenched himself away, letting out a choked off scream in real life as he stumbled backwards, his hands out in front of him before he covered his head in his arms, falling hard against the cobbles and rolling himself into a ball.

“Easy! Easy!” John soothed at once, rushing to the vampire who was now cowering against the curb, practicing his psychic senses one second and rebounding into a tight terrified child the next. “What happened, eh? What’s wrong? Nicolas, answer me.”

“Keep away!” The vampire sobbed, to John’s surprise, while his hands fisted in John’s coat, tugging him closer.

“Well which is it, child?” he found himself asking, his hand going to the vampire’s back and rubbing it soothingly. He felt like a boy at these times, a child too young and innocent for this kind of business. What could this kid know of vampires and evil and blood and battle beyond what he had read in storybooks?

“Keep HIM away!” The creature hissed, digging his face into John’s coat as if he could hide there. “He can’t find me! He can’t find me!”

“Easy, he won’t, all right? You belong to me now, remember? No master can claim you.”

“He can. He already did,” Nicolas said hollowly, but he had stilled, no longer taking heaving sobbing breaths. John was sure there would be vampire tears on his coat come morning, but he could perhaps salvage that into some ingredients.

“You need rest. You did well for your first time,” John told him honestly, taking him by the elbows and pulling him unresistingly to his feet. “Now chin up.” There were dried blood tracks down both of the vampire’s cheeks, and John tried to ignore the macabre look this gave the boy. “We’ll have a night tomorrow, but the sun’ll be up soon for you. I have a cellar I’m renting from a landlady. We can put you up there. Don’t try to cast your mind out anymore tonight.” Nicolas nodded, subdued, and followed John home.

“Who is he?” John asked, trying to be casual as he opened the door to the cellar. The boy was already drowsy, now that it was nearing five o’clock in the morning, and he was sluggish and slow to respond. He raised his eyes to John’s face. “The one you’re afraid of, the one I will keep away from you. And I will.” He suddenly felt a surge of protectiveness for the boy who wasn’t the creature he thought, who was singularly so different from other vampires, at once angry and strong and weak and fearful, and impulsively he added, “I promise. I won’t let him hurt you anymore.” He didn’t know why he promised. He was starting to think of the creature less as his thrall or familiar and more as a person, a boy, a young man delayed.

“You’re a liar, Johnny Aberdeen,” Nicolas said, but it was in his own voice with his own intonations, his strange sober way of talking as if everything they discussed was serious enough for him to care for it with deliberation, like a delicate bird or plant one cultivates. “I’m not a child. I don’t need bedtime stories.” He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, and seemed to survey the sparseness of the place, the wine bottles stored up, the esoteric magical items shoved haphazardly on the storage shelves. He peered at the books stacked up on a working table, even the ones in Latin and Greek, and looked back up at John with his candle.

They looked at each other in silence, both filled with uncertain thoughts. Nicolas swayed a little, and he took up a seat on a bench John had pushed up against the wall, looking grateful for the rest.

“Do you need a pallet? A light?” John asked, trying to be at least a little hospitable. “I have a more or less empty chest you can use if you need the privacy to sleep.”

“No chests,” his new familiar replied wearily, his head nodding once as he struggled to keep his eyes open. He was slumping, and John wondered at being one of the few mortals to witness how a vampire fell into his daytime rest. “Don’t…don’t come near.” His eyelids drooped closed, his fingers stilling and bringing his tiredness into marked contrast with his faint twitchiness and trembling. It was the only time John had ever seen him and would ever see him at peace, in that death sleep.

“I promise,” John whispered softly, and shut the door when the vampire did not reply.

 

At the theatre, Armand was so beside himself that he had gone tight-lipped and silent in a way that suggested he was cultivating a vicious argument with Nicolas once he returned. How dare he leave! How dare he deprive Armand of his presence! Didn’t he see how much they needed each other? Nicolas couldn’t even take care of himself, and Felix fretted every day, blaming himself for losing him so easily. Armand sent out patrols every night, but other than the barest flinch against his own wards around the theatre, he couldn’t even tell whether his Nicolas was still in the great city of Paris. This would not do. He began scanning headlines and visiting prisons, searching for any unusual vagrants that might have seen Nicolas, hoping that perhaps a confused vampire had been picked up by the Marechausse, even.

John watched from the top of the stair as the deathlike stillness left the boy and the figure seemed to melt into life, breathing returning to the body out of habit as Nicolas slid from the day’s sleep into a lighter doze. The mortal descended the stairs slowly, set the candle on the table in its own wax, and sat down on the rickety chair to watch the creature waken. He looked like a boy grown, a young man learning how to be an adult, and the slackness of sleep softened all his hard and angry expressions, his guarded looks, and his sharp eyes. Suddenly, the boy frowned, and then moaned long and low, tossing his head and throwing out his arms.

“N-never,” he murmured, tossing and turning as if struggling against a great and terrible power. “Please, please, don’t leave me, please, he’ll hurt me, he’s hurting me! He’s killing me!”

The pain and fear in that voice was enough to make John’s hackles rise. The boy was terrified and it felt so real.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, sorry, sorry,” Nicolas whispered desperately, shaking and shivering, tossing his head once as his body tightened and drew into itself. “I love you. Please come back please love, please!” Blood tears had begun to leak from his closed eyes, and John stood to instinctively wipe them away.

“It’s all right, boy,” John said, grabbing the creature by the shoulders and shaking him, only to be thrown off and nearly tossed back into his chair. “Just a dream! I’m here, it’s all right!” He leapt back, trying to shake him awake again.

“Lest-“ The boy stopped himself, staring at John wide-eyed and stricken. John looked back uncertainly as he wondered how much mortal life the boy had seen and whether he had already been broken long before he became a vampire. Nicolas flinched, then yanked his arms away. John released him without protest and stood, trying to create some distance once more between them. The unruly boy seemed fragile suddenly, and John looked anywhere but at the vampire hugging itself on his cellar floor. After a while the boy seemed to rouse from his twenty-yard stare, and he gave a sigh before he lowered his chin towards his chest. “I suppose you want a story. Or an explanation for that.”

“Not really. We’ve all had our own share of broken dreams.” John shrugged his hands into his coat pockets and steadfastly studied some wine casks.

“You could compel me.”

“I won’t. Are you ready for the evening’s work or do you need blood?”

“I—“ John turned and looked back at the smile of bemusement upon the vampire’s face. “You speak of it so casually.”

“I’ve seen worse,” John replied with a shrug.

“I need blood every night. So they tell me.”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“I haven’t, well, I don’t really pay attention.”

“You’re the first vampire I’ve met who didn’t care about the blood.”

“No, the blood is glorious, it is life, and it is the only thing that passes for painlessness in what remains of my life,” Nicolas said, trying to keep his tone light. “Take me to the hospital once more. It is an easier rest than I can dream of.”

John nodded silently, and when he leaned down to offer a hand up, Nicolas accepted. It felt different that evening, as if the companionship they shared had turned into something more personal than master and servant. Nicolas obeyed without a question, now just as eager as John to see the end of the demon that had infested his beloved city. John wasn't repelled by him or disgusted. John simply accepted what he was with his bundle of faults and perversions and thirsts and asked Nicolas questions to things he thought he would have to discard now that he had become Armand's plaything. But John didn't know any of that. He thought Nicolas was just mistreated. He didn't know! And Nicolas would do anything to keep him from knowing how complicit he felt in his own damnation and subjugation, how he had ultimately been forced to say yes to everything Armand demanded.

An inner voice told him this wasn't consent, not truly, not when he was being tortured out of his wits every time he did anything the coven master disapproved of, anything that kept Nicolas out of his reach, even temporarily. But that voice was wild and angry and getting weaker every night.

John studied him in the dim candlelit vault of the main patient area, cuddled against the cooling body of his victim like a child seeking succor against a long gone parent. The woman had been mumbling to herself, but her eyes had widened and her gaze had cleared when Nicolas approached her, and she smiled a gap-toothed smile as she reached up for him. They crashed together into the narrow little sickbed, and John tore his eyes away from the powerful sight, feeling like an interloper in a private little drama.

When it was over and he had pulled the vampire away from the corpse, the boy leaned against him momentarily and his breath caught in his throat. It had been too long since he'd felt another against him so trustingly, for Nicolas staggered like a newborn fawn, and his hand was now warm through the fabric of John's coat. Gradually Nicolas leaned less and less on his arm, but despite himself John tugged him closer with his elbow as they headed back for the murder scene, like an old companion with whom he shared the intimacy of affection and space. The vampire said nothing, to his credit, though he occasionally glanced at John thoughtfully.

When they came upon the alley again Nicolas was restless, and a low hum had begun to sound from the back of his throat though his lips were closed. John stopped them and steadied him with a hand on his cheek, his thumb caressing an almost girlish cheekbone. Nicolas flinched as if burned, but for all his preternatural strength he stood frozen before John, paralyzed by the touch of his palm against his cheek and his fingertips around the shell of his ear.

"What are you doing?" He asked in a whisper, and now it was John who felt caught in his gaze.

"I could ask you the same," John replied, his throat gone dry and his heart pounding. Never again, never, it was unnatural and he had enough of a lifetime of fighting demons to know when he ought to refuse his own sinful desires. Nicolas was beautiful and he did not disgust John as most vampires did with their bloodlust and their short-sighted schemes. He was as lost as John felt in the world of the supernatural sometimes, and he seemed ensoulled in a way that destined him for meaningless suffering. "No one ever taught you how to control your powers?"

"Wh-I'm, I'm too young for powers," Nicolas said in surprise, and backed away abruptly, breaking off their tenuous connection. John felt the release at once, like he could breathe again without this madboy.

"Is that what they told you? You were enthralling me. Had I not been a warlock I'd have been your prey by now. Did you know you could do that?" He huffed at Nicolas' confusion. "The one you fear so much. Does he know?"

The anger flared in Nicolas once more, sudden and hot, and John could feel the tendrils of his wild mind withdrawing to join the fire in his head.

"We work tonight on the Orphalthian," Nicolas decided, turning away so the mortal would not see his face. John gave a snort of laughter and drew from his bottomless pockets a pyramidal collection of twigs woven through with string. Violin string, to be precise.

"Suit yourself," John said, placing the curious weaving onto a cobble by the nearest sewer grate. "Traps," he added, taking out another as Nicolas watched him curiously. He placed two more carefully as Nicolas leaned against a nearby wall and studied his gestures over each trap.

"I still don't believe that magic exists," Nicolas reminded him flatly. Whether it was true mattered not to him, only that he thought the man a little ridiculous. The way Lestat was sometimes in his exuberance. The thought made his wrists and his chest ache and he gave a little huff of breath to cover and swallow the grief that surged anew in him. "And don't traps require bait?"

"You, of course. You've a fine enough voice. Think you can entice it with humming a little melody? It's after music," John explained.

"I don't understand. Why would it silence the music if it's been after--no, the mother and child last night could not be musicians," Nicolas said.

"Here's what it is," John tried to explain. "Some peoples believe that life was woven and created through music. Their stories about how the world began say that God is the ultimate harmony. Imagine that story is true. That story and all the stories there ever were by all the people that ever existed. For a given value of truth. That's what magic is. Knowing how to bend the story and knowing how much of the story you can change and which rules to follow that will make it true." A look of understanding and wonder was dawning on Nicolas' face and John thought with a surge of hope he might finally have met someone he could share--but no, they always died in horrible ways. Johnny Aberdeen Crenshaw was not suited for happiness, was he? And the thought itself was sinful, to want the vampire's companionship, to entertain the lusts for a man's body that would never in any form ever lead to procreation and the honoring of God. "The Orphalthian must have been attracted to the mother and child through a bedtime song or a simple ditty. But that was just the entree to the song of their hearts. It hungers for the music of their lives. In the narrative of that demon's cosmogony, music is its food. So do you think you can carry a tune?"

"Haah," Nicolas made a curious sound that was half laughter half bitter grief. "My wardens, they call me the Divine Violinist, but I only play for the Devil and his bastard imp and that name is for no other purpose other than to mock me."

"How dramatic," John murmured, for he had met the Devil and outsmarted several of his demonic half-breeds and never had he heard of a vampire in his court. For all of Nicolas' skepticism and cynicism, he was still naive to the ways of magic and the supernatural. Even Heaven had rattled him grievously.

"Yes, what delightful entertainment. And why don't you sing us a song then?" The vampire nearly hissed.

"Because I need to be the Mage to trap him. And you are hardier than a singing mortal." John paused and relented at the doubtful expression on the vampire's face. "I just need to get him between these three points to trap him. You'll survive at least his first attack. He'll be confused by your very nature. That gives me time. If the first round destroys one of the anchors, I have more."

"And what am I supposed to do to survive his attacks? What will he do to me?"

"Anything it wants, I'm afraid," John replied. "Do you lack the courage now to see it through?"

"No," Nicolas replied with a shake of his head. "If only I had my violin."

"We'll have to make due with your voice. We'll talk of violins if it rips your throat out," John told him grimly, and Nicolas shot him a look of alarm.

"You jest, surely?"

"How would it be any less than what it did to the mother and child? Here, hold this in your hand."

"A magic wand? And if I can no longer sing?"

"It will make you. Most likely until you scream," John said, and patted Nicolas' cheek companionably when he saw his startled expression. "The bar will focus it. Keep it in your hand if you want to survive this."

“So it prefers the bar, then?” Nicolas asked, examining what looked like a mere rod of crudely-cast iron. The castoffs of a poor foundry. He waved it a little, feeling like a conductor at an orchestra.

“There you are, you’re a natural,” John replied. “So you’re a musician then? I thought so, with those fingers.”

“You’ve been looking at my fingers?” Nicolas asked warily, now holding the iron stick like a conductor’s baton.

“Not just your fingers,” John muttered under his breath as he turned his back on the vampire to place a few more traps for their quarry.

“Is that so?”

“You heard that?” John asked, straightening up in alarm.

“I’m a musician, remember?” Nicolas asked, raising one amused eyebrow. He gave John an appraising look and seemed to come to a decision, but he said nothing. Instead he closed his eyes and sang softly, a holy hymn he knew well, for he played accompaniment to it many a Sunday at the village church in Auvergne. It felt blasphemous to be singing it at all, and to his dismay the laughter began to ring in his head, bubbling up, scratching at the back of his throat. He sang a little louder, and shivered as he felt the cool tendrils of the monster's mind caressing his throat. His head snapped back and suddenly he rose in the air, still trying to sing, but it was hard with his throat taut and it felt like he was going to tear something. He changed into something lower, a misere nobis, but the creature kept pulling him into higher registers. He opened his eyes in panic and realized John was shouting at him. The trap! It knew and had lifted Nicolas into the air, and John's tidy little constructions were stuck on the ground. He could hear John's desperate incantations and he choked on his breath, the chords in his throat tearing as it dove into his mouth and swelled in his neck, and it felt like he was being played like an instrument, the creature strumming on the strings of his voice. The iron bar fell out of his hands as a great burst of air seemed to invade his chest and puff into him like a bellows. He distantly heard the clatter against the cobbles, and tasted blood.

He was going to die. It was better this way, he realized, in the service of a foolish noble cause. Lestat would be proud, the golden idiot. If only it didn't hurt so terribly, his voice now singing an ancient tune of its own volition that made his heart ache. He didn't know the song. The demon was shoving air through him and using his throat like any other instrument. Perhaps he'd make a lovely lyre. He tasted blood again, a gash of pain through his throat, and abruptly the music died. The air went out of him and rushed past his ears before he plummeted to the cobbles below.

"Steady on!" John was saying past the ringing in Nicki's ears as he grasped the vampire by the shoulder.

"---" Nicolas tried to speak, but it was as if he had no voice or throat. He clasped his neck in panic, swallowing, and felt his Adam's apple bobbing. No sound. No sound! It had taken his voice!

John must have seen the panic rising in his eyes because suddenly he was shoved face first against John's chest. Nicolas allowed the mortal to hold him and calm him, but the frantic little noises he might have made were mute.

"We got it, boy, we got it!" John was saying fiercely past the ringing in Nicki's ears. "You did it! It's all right! You've probably only torn your throat. Your kind heal quickly, don't they?"

"---!" Nicolas tried to say, but his throat felt like it was in tatters and he looked pleadingly up at John.

"I tossed another one in the air, and it went just high enough to form a pyramid of space," John explained, thinking Nicolas was asking for a summary of what transpired. But no, if Nicki was injured there was only one way to fix it. He sat up gingerly and took John's face in both hands, making the mortal still despite his excitement.

"Wh-" John barely breathed out, before Nicolas snarled silently, baring his fangs and sinking them deep into John's throat. Immediately the mortal stiffened, but it was too late as Nicolas tasted the sharp spicy tang of his blood, the strange eldritch feeling of a magic-user's force pulling into him. He heard the groan he made from his own throat, and gently disengaged from the mortal.

John's eyes were hazy in the blood swoon and Nicolas pressed their lips together, letting the magician taste his own blood's salt spice. With a soft moan, John responded in kind, his tongue flicking at the interiors of Nicki's mouth and cutting itself on his fangs. With a scrape of his tongue, Nicolas made droplets of blood well up, and felt John's body melt and relax into his arms as the Blood came upon him.

 

* * *

 

 

"So this is where you've been spending your hours," Armand said coldly behind him. Frozen in mid-reach, Nicolas turned slowly to face him, terrified from being discovered. He watched, still as a deer, as Armand walked up to the cauldron of ingredients he had been preparing for John. The coven master wrinkled his nose and tipped over the cauldron, the green liquid splashing everywhere and turning as crimson as blood. Nicolas gave a start of surprise, and he dropped the athame in the potion's broth, now a flood on the floor of John's workroom.

"How did you find this place?" Nicolas asked.

"I grew tired of waiting for you to return, Armand replied. "did you really think you could hide from me?"

"No," Nicolas whispered, throat dry as he tried to move so he was separated by the heavy tank. "But I-"

"Stupid fool," Armand said, stepping close so that he was pushing Nicolas up against the iron tank. He drew one long and sharp fingernail up Nicki's chest, taking apart the buttons of his shirt quickly by slicing through the cloth, and yanked Nicolas to him by twisting his nipples. Nicolas gave a cry of dismay and began fighting against his hold instantly, his feet scrabbling uselessly on the floor as he shoved against the older vampire.

"Stop it! Stop it!"

"I own you," Armand whispered, licking with his long fine tongue a long line up Nicki's neck and watching him shiver.

"Oi! Drop him!"

Armand looked sharply up at the English mortal, fair of hair and blue of cunning eye, and dropped Nicolas unceremoniously to the floor. He clattered in a pile of limbs and shoved himself onto his hands and knees before rolling away from the Crimson potion as it burned his bare hands and sank into the cloth of his breeches. There was a loud clunk as he struck the table, but he clutched his burned hands to himself in pain, waiting for them to heal.

"And who are you?" Armand asked, tilting his head as if examining a particularly interesting specimen from the natural academy.

"I'm the bloke who's gonna kick you out of here!" John replied as he rolled up his sleeves in preparation of a spell. Armand nearly hissed as he circled the mortal magician, eyeing him carefully.

"Spare me," Armand said, and was surprised to be ducking a blue fireball thrown at his head. It exploded when it hit the wall behind him, singing the flag hanging there. "So you are not a mere conjurer."

"I'm definitely a mere conjurer," John said. "I am also a very good one."

"Fortunately you'll die young," Armand predicted, and leapt for John's throat, only to bounce back from the magical shield John threw up. He landed on his rear with a look of surprise before he narrowed his eyes at the mortal, his face a perfect mask of hate.

"Ooh, knew you was a faker," John said, deliberately butchering his accent as he lit his pipe carefully.

"Agh!" Armand shook his boots off quickly as they were lit on fire. They began to smell of tobacco ash.

"Little boy, hadn't you better run along home?" John asked, puffing on his pipe in a rather pleased way. He kept his distance from Armand as he circled the room to Nicki, whose hands had healed and who was getting to his feet. "This the bastard who rapes you then?" he asked without taking his eyes off the coven master.

"Is that what you told him, lover?" Armand asked. "Did you not tell him how you squirm for my touch, how everything I do just has you begging me for more?"

"Shut up!" Nicolas cried, his fists clenched at his sides. John steadied him with a hand on his shoulder.

"Did you think he would believe your lies for much longer?" Armand asked, taking a stockinged step towards them. It would have made him look oddly innocent were malevolence not pouring from his stance. "He's about to find out how much of a whore you really are. How you beg for anyone to fill you and give you meaning."

"That's enough," John said, his voice low and angry. "You don't get to talk to him that way anymore."

"Mon cher Nicki," Armand tsked, still advancing. "Getting mortals to fight on your behalf now?"

"I can't, I won't go back," Nicolas said, visibly struggling to control his fear.

"Now you've inconvenienced me by making me fetch you," Armand muttered. "Come with me now and I might spare your mortal. But do not try my patience any further. Your punishment awaits."

"I'm not some child you-" Nicolas began, but Armand shut him up with a mental shove of force that knocked him to the floor. Nicolas was quick to recover and rise to his feet. John rushed to his side to check him over but he was waved off.

"But you are. You are a mere child compared to what I've seen," Armand corrected him, holding out his hands. "And you have disobeyed your coven master for the last time."

"That's it," John decided, and thrust his hands towards Armand. Power channeled out of his arms and barreled into the coven master, shoving him back. Armand held up a nearby platter as a shield and tried again for John, only to find his magical barrier flung up again. With immortally quick moves he threw punch after punch, only to be rebounded every time.

When Nicolas stepped forth to assist Armand snarled, "you aid him and I will make your punishment so much worse when we get home." It stopped Nicki in his tracks and struck fear down his spine, his eyes seeing what fitting tortures Armand might have.

"Don't listen to him, Nick," John said, shooting another bolt of fire at the ancient vampire. "I won't let him take you. You're stronger than this! Don't let him talk to you like that!"

"But, but," Nicolas stammered as he backed away in fear. "He-" When he was newly made Nicki would have fought Armand to the bone. He knew better now. He'd done that and the only thing he had to show for it was more madness, more scars across his psyche. Armand had almost broken him. But where he had been spared, Nicolas played host to an assortment of hells and terrors Armand had designed for him, night after night.

Impatient, Armand tried again to reach the mortal, only to be rebuffed once more.

Finally he snatched up a nearby test tube and threw it at Nicolas instead, who had been watching helplessly on the side. The attack distracted John for long enough to permit Armand's fingers to wrap around his throat and crush, then smash his fragile skull against the floor.

"Guh," John gurgled, his eyes blind as he reached out for something. Half his brain was splattered over the floor and Nicolas still could not escape the paralysis of his terror.

"No!" He screamed, but Armand flung up a hand, forcing him to remain still.

"Do not help him."

"I can save him! The Blood can heal him, even something this bad-"

"But you won't! You've been very bad, Nicki," Armand said, letting the mortal flop to the floor. He picked up a broken test tube, twirling it idly in his fingers as he looked over Nicki's crouched form.

"Bee," John struggled to say, his one good eye on Nicki. "From. Bee freeze." His words were failing him. "Love." His eye closed.

"NO!" Nicolas screamed, and rushed past Armand, surprising him. "NO! Don't leave me too!" But the mortal was gone, the body cold in Nicki's arms. He clutched the corpse to himself for a moment, stealing a few seconds to weep. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't help! I'm so sorry!"

"Time for your punishment," Armand said behind him. Nicki stiffened at those words, and a flare of anger passed over his face. Without even thinking he grabbed the athame dropped on the floor earlier and lunged at Armand with it. His wrist was caught in the coven master's grip all too easily.

"I hate you!" Nicolas screamed as Armand inspected the glittering bone knife and then squeezed Nicki's wrist so hard he had to drop the athame, his shaking fingers splayed out in midair as his body curled towards the pain. "Ahh!"

"No," was all Armand said, before he whipped Nicolas around and knocked him to the floor. Furious and foolish, Nicki rebounded to kick and strike Armand again, as he had done in those early nights. Armand backhanded him to the floor and then kicked him in the head so hard blackness passed over Nicki's vision. What he saw next was a world tilted as he was pressed down against the wet floor, his wrists bound and his ankles secured. Still angry and now nauseous, he struggled and twisted his wrists and feet, still trying to get free.

"Good, you are awake to appreciate this." Armand was behind him and Nicolas turned only to see John's dead face staring back at him. A scream rose in his throat and he tried to turn away, but Armand snatched his head and forced him to face his dead lover. "No. You don't have the luxury."

Nicolas snarled, sobbing, and bucked against Armand again, trying to kick out and fight once more. But Armand only chuckled, and stripped Nicolas efficiently of his breeches, leaving him naked.

"No! You won't! Not anymore!" Nicolas growled, tears obscuring John's blank face as he wept and thrashed. "You don't get to touch me anymore!"

"We have forgotten our lessons so quickly," Armand murmured, boxing Nicolas' ears, making him pause and blink. "Still you seek to fight me? Haven't you learned by now?"

"Never," Nicolas growled, though his well-taught fear had prevented him from aiding his lover. Now he hated it, and would do anything to put it behind him for his vengeance. "Never!" He tried to kick out again, but quickly Armand grabbed the broken test tube and rammed it into Nicki's bouncing anus, drawing a scream from him as he used the broken glass to slice a tunnel into Nicki's arse. "No!" Nicolas groaned, shaking his head drunkenly against the floor, his body trying to twist to escape and finding the glass cutting him from the inside with every move. "take it out! Take it out! It hurts!”

"Not until you submit," Armand said. "and you must. And you shall."

"Never! Never never never never aangh!" Nicolas chanted, but Armand was fitting a hose from John's alchemy set to the tube. He cast about for a pump and idly kneaded Nicki's neck with the heel of his foot and he did so, enjoying the violinist's struggles.

"You'll submit to me before long," Armand promised as his clever hands made the adjustments. "Not to worry."

"Stop!" Nicolas said, trying again to thrash and release himself, to turn despite the pain.

"Such impatience. Submit to me again, Nicki, and you will not suffer any longer."

"No! Never never--"

"How tiresome," Armand sighed, and poured the first beaker of liquid into the impromptu apparatus he had devised. He squeezed gently on the bladder he had made from John's stomach while Nicki had been unconscious.

"What-what have you done?" Nicolas asked, his buttocks trying to push out the test tube. Cold fluid was trickling into him, cooling his bleeding wounds from inside. "Wh-what is this?"

"Submit."

"No! No!" Nicolas thrashed, but his hands were still bound to his waist and his feet could find no purchase while Armand was pinning his knees to the floor.

"Submit, Nicolas, and all this shall stop. We can go home." A second beaker. Nicolas felt the hot heated liquid pump into him, and in vain he tried to writhe and push out the tube. It had nestled deep inside him, and his healing vampire body had sealed around it. He tried to thrash to make it difficult for Armand and found it harder to do, the growing fullness inside him making him tender and sensitive.

"No, stop," Nicolas gasped, as a third beaker gushed fluid into him. He stared into John's blue eye, trying to escape the pressure as he gingerly rolled as much as he could. But his muscles were not obeying him any longer, and never had he been bloated in this frightening fashion. His eyes traveled downwards and discovered the horror that had been made of John's guts, and his gasp of anguish made the fourth beaker almost go unnoticed. Almost.

"Shh," Armand said softly. His hand traveled down and palmed Nicki's limp cock, willing it to waken.

"No, no, no, stop, stop," Nicolas whispered, but he could not control his body's reactions to Armand's skilled hands.

"Submit," Armand said, stroking Nicki's rising cock and giving him the only relief to be had. "Submit and all pleasure can be yours."

"No!" Nicolas gasped, squeezing his eyes shut as he tried to think of the worst, the nightmares, trying to will himself to soften. But his body sought relief and he had to stifle his groan of pleasure as Armand's thumb brushed his head.

"Your body knows what you need. Submit and you need not suffer. Do you feel yourself bloating now? Has a physician ever done this to you before?"

Without thinking, filled with shame and pain, Nicolas shook his head, his expression screwed up in distress.

"Feel what pleasure I can give you," Armand said soothingly, stroking Nicki's cock until it was harder than ever before. Little gasps of pleasure were escaping him and he could not stifle the sounds he made at each stroke. "What a whore you are. Your dead lover beside you and your arse plugged with liquid. And still you pant for my touch."

"No! No! I won't! Stop!" Nicolas bellowed, and Armand slapped him across the mouth, whipping his face against the floor. This time a fifth beaker, then a sixth, and Nicolas could hear the depressing of the bladder, of John's stomach, as it forced liquid into his unwilling body. The pressure was dizzying, and he found he could no longer thrash or fight, for the fullness inside him was softening him to Armand's will. His muscles were spamming around the tube and they struggled to relax. It made his limbs impossible to command.

"Submit." Armand's hands sped up, and this time Nicolas could not stop his moan as his world pitched, his body nothing more than a receptacle for Armand's will. "Look at how full you are with purpose. This is what you're for." A hand went to the taut skin of his abdomen and he saw how it looked as if he were a woman, pregnant, and he closed his eyes and reeled, trying to wrap his mind around the feeling of being so full where he never had. He was meant to struggle and to fight but he could barely keep his world from spinning.

"Stop...please..." Nicolas moaned, eyes closed against the nausea. "Please stop..."

"Almost done my love," Armand promised him. Another beaker. Nicolas lost count. "You are so beautiful like this. So full of promise."

"Please..."

"Do you still fight me? Do you still defy me?"

"Please stop..."

"Submit, then."

"Please..." Nicolas moaned, unable to refuse out of fear. He felt like he was bursting, and all his limbs were jerking fitfully. He felt heavy, and his teased cock jutted out of him like a flag beneath his distended abdomen. Armand rubbed and kissed the taut skin, caressing his belly and then giving his cock a few more tugs. "Gnnoo please stop..."

"Do you want more?"

"No!" Nicolas gasped frantically, eyes snapping wide open. He looked up at Armand pleadingly. "No, please, no more."

"Then submit." Nicolas closed his eyes and turned his face away. Another beaker was prepared. He felt so full, so helpless. "Submit." He whispered something that felt like a no, but as the liquid poured and he swelled, he heard himself hiss, "yessss..."

The liquid stopped. His head lolled as he tried to look up, his world tilted and hazy from his pain. All his muscles were cramping up and he could no longer move, much less fight.

"Still you beg for my touch?" Armand smiled, and wrapped his hand around Nicki's cock once again. His hips thrust forward involuntarily, seeking the hot heat of comfort as the world narrowed and blurred.

"Yes," Nicolas croaked, as if it were the only word he knew.

"Submit," Armand said, as he cut the bonds at his ankles and pulled Nicolas upright.

"Yes," Nicolas replied dully, feeling safe as Armand held him up because he could not stand. "Please." He smeared his cheek against Armand's shoulder, and his hips thrust forward again into empty air. He was full, so full.

"Please what?"

"Please. Please," Nicolas echoed, mindlessly rutting against Armand's thigh.

"Shh. Do you promise to obey?"

"Yes," Nicolas chanted, nuzzling Armand's shoulder, wiping his sweaty forehead against the coven master's neck. He couldn't go on like this. Armand teased his cock again and he groaned, thrusting again with his hips. "Please."

"You have two choices. More of this. Or my cock inside you."

"Please please," Nicolas whispered in confusion.

"Do you want my cock inside you, Nicki?"

"Yes..."

"Do you want me to fuck you?"

"Yes, please, yes."

"Then you must ask for it. Beg me for it."

"Please..." Nicolas struggled, his mind reeling from the sensations that assaulted him. He felt like he would burst. Somewhere Armand had replaced the test tube with the cold stone of a pestle, too large for him but it acted as an effective stopper.

"Form the words, Nicki. I want to hear it from your lips, so you cannot lie later and say you did not want it."

"Please...please fuck me..."

"With what?"

"Your cock...oh god..." Nicolas panted, Armand's hand stroking him again. He thrust helplessly into his hand and he leaned heavily on the coven master, bound, bloated, blind with sensation.

"Say it. Beg."

"Please! Please fuck me with...please fuck me with your cock!" Nicolas pleaded, struggling to piece the words together. Suddenly every fiber of his being tensed and tightened as Armand yanked the stone pestle out of Nicki's arse, then caught the limp violinist as everything inside him went gushing the other way. Every muscle went slack as Armand pressed against his abdomen to force the liquids out, and he collapsed in Armand's arms, legs shaking as they could no longer hold him up. He could barely feel the twinges of humiliation as his abdomen spasmed again, letting loose another torrent of fluid. He moaned softly, twitching traveling up and down his body as he hung in the coven master's grasp.

"You've made such a mess," Armand tsked, before he slammed Nicolas to the ground, shoving his face right in front of his dead lover's. "But I will grant you the succor you beg for."

"Please..." Nicolas moaned, but none of his limbs would obey him. Armand pulled his hips up and kept him facing John's dead face. Suddenly he was impaled, hard and deep, the liquids and his involuntary relaxation making the way easy for Armand to breach him. He kept his eyes half-open, unable to close them or fight back as he was violated again and again, his dead lover gazing back accusingly. Armand was not gentle in his rape and he smacked Nicolas to make his body seize and spasm, and it seemed a long time before Nicolas felt the blood semen surge into his limp body. A small whimper escaped him as Armand gathered him into his arms and kissed him on the forehead.

"You'll never fight me again, will you?" Armand whispered as his fingers wrapped around Nicki's cock to reawaken him. He had been remade according to Armand's desires. "You're mine."

"Yes..." moaned Nicolas and his head lolled back against Armand's shoulder as he came, shuddering, his eyes on his murdered lover's face.


	10. Handless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even after his hands are taken away, Nicolas de Lenfent cannot escape Armand. Eleni finally finds a way.
> 
> This chapter contains: Mental Health Issues, Mental Disintegration, Mental Breakdown, feral!Nicki, Implied/Referenced Amputation, Gore, Nonconsensual Anal Fingering, Emotional Manipulation, Rape, glimpses of sane!Nicki, Forced Orgasm, Multiple Orgasms, Overstimulation, Begging, Enemas, Multiple Penetration, Nonconsensual Gangbang, Spitroasting, Minor Original Character Death, Rape Aftermath, Hurt/Comfort, Character Death(?), sane!Nicki

Eyes bright and feverish, back cleaving to the wall, his tongue darted out to taste the dried blood on his lips as he crouched hopelessly before the coven master, trying not to flinch at the candlelight and failing miserably. Venice, with her drowned houses and fiery people, was drawing closer. It was too loud, too loud! He whimpered, then choked on his tears as he dragged himself away from the bars where his chin had lingered only just minutes ago.

Armand was here to hurt him again, to confuse him with words, to make those loud sounds in his head that were still not loud enough to drown out everything else. He whimpered, and hid his face behind a forearm, the dried blood flaking off the stumps of his wrists. He hurt so much, he just wanted it to stop. And he thirsted, and he was so afraid of shadows and himself that he trembled nearly constantly.

The coven master surveyed the tableau before him in silence. The hitched sobs coming out of the back of Nicolas’ throat were getting quieter, at least, but if he left him alone the broken moans would start up again, and Celeste would complain that she could not perform if her toilette was always being disturbed. Armand thought it musical, on the contrary, the colors of sounds and the spectrum of suffering he had managed to draw out of Nicolas. He did not want to think this was the end.

He set the candle down on the floor and walked up to the bars even as Nicolas shoved himself backwards as far as he was able, afraid of any more action on the coven master’s part. He was trembling and trying to stroke his face with his pitiful stumps, now healed to mere bloody puckered wounds. His hands had still not been restored, and he was beginning to rub his face against the body of a violin he could not play. The music was still there, though, and Armand had been reluctant to ever stop that.

“How are we tonight?” Armand asked solicitously of the madman in the corner. Nicolas shrank behind his instrument, as if it would truly protect him. He watched the broken fledgling cower on the ground and allowed himself a shiver of delight as he stretched his back subtly. Nick wore nothing but a pair of breeches, ragged and torn at the knees and loose about him. Beneath the grime and dirt and dried flakes of blood not yet licked off was a gleaming pale chest with tight abdomen and dusky pink nipples Armand longed to suck and tweak and feel Nicki's groan rumbling through his ribcage. 

"You bastard," Nicolas hissed in a single moment of focus, and Armand told himself it had only been one night. He mustn't expect results too quickly, as disconnected and raving Nicki had been when Armand chopped his hands off. "What do you think?"

"I think you are prolonging unnecessary suffering. The others miss you already. We need our music director." Armand clasped his hands behind his back. He looked like a respectable manager with an ethereal beauty about him. 

"We don't need you. No one needs you," Nicolas muttered, and Armand's eyes narrowed. He mentally pressed Nicolas down on the ground as he unlocked the door with the ring of keys he kept around his person. He maintained the pressure as he watched Nicolas' eyes widen in fear. Such large trusting eyes, framed now by a crow's nest of dark curly hair, loose and wild and as much a betrayal of his state of mind as anything else. With slow patient steps he approached the prone violinist, then released him as his hand reached out to grab him by the throat, turning his face upwards and exposing his neck, as if to remind Nicolas at whose mercy he was. 

A trembling came over all of his prisoner's limbs, and he hunched as if to hide his maimed wrists from the coven master. As Armand caressed his cheek with a sharp fingernail, the trembling became worse as Nicolas noticeably shook. Armand picked him up by the throat, enjoying the look of panic when the violinist realized how little he could do to struggle. Instinctively he put out his arms to push Armand away, only to be reminded of his missing hands. A nasty jolt of fear tore through him then, and Armand chuckled as Nicolas looked at the stumps that ended his arms in horror, a soundless scream opening his kissable lips. Tears sprang to his eyes, blood-red but unfallen. A fledgling still, he must be thirsting, for he had not been allowed to feed since Armand had drained him dry the previous night. Indeed, a gaunt appearance was evident around his hollow cheeks and ribs. 

Nicolas was shaking his head slowly, staring unblinkingly at his wrists without really seeing them. This would not do. 

"Nicolas," Armand said softly, giving him a gentle shake and cuffing his neck. The madman's gaze slowly lifted and searched Armand's face with a fearful expression. God, was this all he was good for now? Armand had not wanted some cringing servant. He had one already. "Nicolas? Can you understand me?"

Nicolas stared up at him now, and when he began to scowl and evil words began to form on his lips, Armand cuffed him again on the back of the head, jolting him from his train of thought. 

"Nicolas? Do you hear me?" Armand asked again, allowing a sharpness to enter his voice. Though his face was only a foot away from his ward's, Nicolas twitched as if startled, and just noticing him. He stared a little past Armand as if to listen carefully, though the words had been clear. 

"Ou-ou-ou-i-i..." Nicolas stuttered. That was new. The skin under one eye twitched. Armand watched it until it was still, and leaned forward, ignoring the choking sound of terror from his prisoner's throat, and the way Nicolas seemed to shrink down into himself. Armand spread himself over Nicolas' larger frame, pushing him down to the dirty stone floor. Though Nicki shook with the hiccoughing sobs he could not seem to stop, Armand claimed his lips, forcing them open and tonging the roof of Nicki's mouth, then his gums, tasting the softness of him. He plundered and stabbed at his tongue and throat as he sucked on lips that were soft despite what had transpired. A thin high cry sounded in the back of Nicki's throat and Armand released him with moan to himself. How could one man's terror be so delicious?

"You grovel so prettily," Armand remarked, giving him an impish smile when he released him. Nicki's lips were swollen and in his passion Armand had left bite marks against them, deep and split. 

"Y-y-" Nicolas tried to say, but Armand struck him with the back of his hand, making him grunt in surprise and pain, then snatched his chin, squeezing his cheeks together painfully with his long fingers and forcing Nicolas to look at him. 

"You are mine. Are you not grateful for my love?" Armand asked, eyebrows raised in plaintive sorrow. He supposed he was a trifle mad himself, to be toying with a mere fledgling like this for no purpose beyond a certain sadism. Nicolas stared at him, lips working with no sound coming from them as he tried to find the words and speech that fled him. He palmed Nicolas' crotch, disappointed to find him uninterested, for he had thought him better trained that this. Perhaps there was too much fear and terror with the pain. 

"M-m-m-myyy," Nicolas tried to squeeze out. "My h-ha-hands." His expression twisted into one of plaintive sorrow, as if to wonder why this had happened. “I-I-I I d-d-o-on’t…” He shook his head, looking down at the stumps of his wrists in bewilderment and dismay.

Annoyed, Armand kissed Nicolas to shut him up, relishing the sound of surprise and panic he captured in his mouth. His hand went down to fondle Nicolas' cock, only to have the violinist stretch and elongate his body to try to get away from that questing hand. Furious, he broke the kiss and snatched Nicki's crotch hard, making him cry out in pain and clench his teeth. His whole form was trembling now and Armand released him in disgust before rising to his feet. Nicolas tried to follow, ducking Armand's grab for him as he set a single naked foot over the prison cell threshold. With vicious blows Armand shoved him to the floor and kicked him in the middle, and was grateful Nicolas had no hands to cover his vulnerable abdomen. He contorted Nicolas into fanciful curves as his body twisted and curled against the kicking of Armand's hard boots. When Nicolas could no longer even do that, Armand left him curled and moaning on the floor, licking at the spilled blood he had coughed out from the beating. 

He returned but moments later with heavy iron manacles and shackles he had found in the dungeon. With perverse glee he wasted no time in clamping the roughly-cast shackles around Nicki's ankles, where they gouged at his skin with their weight. He took a ring nearly an inch thick, probably made more for architecture than humans, and clamped it around Nicki's neck. It hung heavily but left more than enough room should Armand wish to sample the legacy of Magnus. He took a heavy chain and looped it through the ring before locking it in place to each shackle, forming an odd triangle of heavy forged iron. It restricted Nicki's movement, forcing his back to curve forwards so his neck would not be broken by the iron ring. Importantly, if Nicolas tried to flee, he could do no more than shuffle forwards on all fours, or stumps and knees, in pain all the while from the strain on his back. 

"Th-th-" Nicolas began as he saw the proceedings, but the hissing from he back of his throat was starting again, and before Armand could clap a hand over his mouth the hissing laughter had begun again, uncontrollable, unstoppable, and unwavering. Tears slid from the sides of Nicki's eyes as he curled up even more with the force of his laughs, and when Armand struck him he hiccoughed but once as he continued to laugh. 

"Fool," Armand said in disgust, and turned shoved his face against the floor. He tugged off Nicki's torn and frayed breeches, exposing his flaccid cock to the cold night air. Nicolas could not even hide himself as he rocked helplessly in laughter and pain. He tried to rise on his stumps, but they had not healed well and broke open anew with bleeding torn edges. The pink was an odd contrast and Armand bent to lick at one edge, fantasizing that he could almost taste bone. He wanted all of Nicolas. So he had reduced him to a more manageable size. A crazed giggle came to him inside but he did not allow it to pass his lips, and for a wild moment he thought Nicolas' insanity was infectious. He bent at his work again. 

With rough thrusts of his finger Armand stretched Nicki's hole, smirking at the throaty moans he conjured that had the violinist laugh-pleading and shaking his head frantically with every penetration. He licked his finger again and held Nicki's shuddering hips in place as he pressed into him, widening and stretching him as he hooked his finger around the rim, coaxing out a rosebud from the darkness. Nicolas heaved, but couldn't bring up anything to vomit, though his back struggled to arch even when it choked him. His toes curled as he tensed involuntarily against the pain of Armand's violations and with stupid shakes of his head he struggled to voice something past the laughter. 

"Silence," Armand said in a tone that brooked no argument, though he knew Nicolas could hardly control his fit. He struck Nicolas hard on the back of his head, slamming his forehead into the ground and making his breath hitch. The laughter dissolved into a pained groan, and loosened him for a third finger besides as the violinist was caught off guard. Taking pity on the choking sounds his prey was making, Armand turned him over and finally curled his hands around his own penis, and lined it up carefully with Nicki's quivering hole as it puckered and tried to close. 

Armand had pulled his legs apart taut, but it forced his neck upwards to the breaking point from how little chain there was between ankle and throat. Nicolas reeled, struggling to find an equilibrium and focus that would give him some stable ground from which to fight. And he still wanted to fight, he would lash out with claws if his hands had not been taken away, and he still tried to kick and squeeze his legs together even as Armand forced them apart and exposed him like an open clam, his soft vulnerable insides offered for the taking. 

"Y-y-you don't n-n-need t-to d-do th-thissss!" Nicolas begged at last, biting each word out painfully as he trembled. "I-I-"

"Oh my dear Nicki," Armand said with a smile that struck fear in Nicolas' heart. He flinched when Armand's hand came towards his face, only to caress his cheek tenderly. "It's not about what you or I need," he said kindly, looking every bit an angel, a disarming innocent beauty. "It's about what you deserve. You're an utter failure, don't you know? You always have been. I have only tried to protect you from the inevitable."

"Th-that's--"

"Oh it's true. I have not lied to you, not once," Armand promised him. "And now I grace you with what succor I can provide." He thrust his hips forward, shoving Nicolas down as he entered with brutal force. It was enough to wrench a scream from the violinist, but screams were common enough to hear these days. "That's it, my love."

Nicolas' world was burning. The tendrils of pain, sharp as knives, threaded up from where he was joined with Armand and sliced deeper into him with every thrust as Armand rocked them back and forth on the curvature of Nicki's spine. His neck was thrust forward and though he was wont to find a brick in the ceiling to ground him during these moments of attention from Armand, tonight he could find no such solace, the thirst for blood in him driving him to distraction. And yet every moment of Armand’s touch, the very grace of his hands on his skin, seemed to give him a succor and serve as an echo of some tender touch he must have had once, some gentling embrace. O, when had he last felt the caress of a lover? When had he last felt the touch of someone who cared? He had forgotten what gentleness felt like. He had lost it when they’d first snatched him from his home and tortured him as a lost mortal. Everything afterwards had been a too-strong echo of something pure, now tainted and impassioned and rough. None of the subtlety of a lover. He couldn’t remember when he’d last been held like a treasured companion. All he had was Armand’s scant mercy.

Armand adjusted his angle and tilted Nicolas until he cried out, harsh and guttural, and Armand smiled and Nicolas hated and hated and hated as Armand struck the deep center of him over and over, dragging out a torrent of unwilling pleasure from him. He hated how the soul-shattering pleasure-pain could be tugged and drawn out of him so easily whenever, no, only when Armand reamed him to his core. He hated how a part of him begged for it, begged to be taken down and dissected--quite literally that one interesting night in hell with Armand wearing a physic's robes like a farce, looking at a medical textbook--because it was the only relief he had from the unending pain he now found was his only companion. Pain in his head, in his body, in his wrists, pain everywhere but with these terrible moments with Armand, when his body was no longer his own, when it obeyed every command from Armand's clever hands and domineering cock. 

He would have thrown his head back if he could, but it was tugged forward with every thrust as Armand buried himself in Nicolas with another moan.

“Ah, my Nicki, you were made for me,” Armand muttered, and leaned down to bestow a kiss on Nicki’s open mouth. He would have bitten Armand if he wasn’t trying to endure the fire erupting from his violation. He had thought it would fade as Armand continued, but instead the sharpness invaded his thoughts even more, spreading out and making him want to gouge out his own eyes if he could just get away from the pain inside him. The disgusting sounds of their coupling tore another sob from him, and a thin high scream started and did not stop. Was that him? He couldn’t stop the sounds, as Armand kissed his neck and suddenly pistoned his hips even faster, jackrabbiting into him with a violence that would not even allow him to take a single breath to scream. 

He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth, trying to ride out the pain until Armand would explode inside him, but his body was still responding to the now constant pounding against his prostate. His cock was soft, only half-hard from the pain, and Armand grasped it between them, urging it to awaken. Nicolas shook his head frantically, trying to twist away from the coven master though he knew it was useless. With his legs bound and his hands gone, he was merely a ripe offering for anyone to take. With a soft gasp Armand shoved against him a final time, and Nicolas felt the blood healing his passage, undoing the damage Armand had caused. The coven master withdrew at last with a burning sensation, and Nicolas tried in vain to kick away, to do something to cope with the pain, but he was held down by firm hands much stronger than he.

“My love,” Armand whispered, kissing him on the cheek, and lay down on the filthy floor beside him. “Thank you.” Nicolas stared up at the ceiling as Armand kissed his cheek and his neck, and he closed his eyes, feeling empty and hollowed out, trying to reach for the soft kisses Armand granted him and unable to reach them for fear of the pain that would come with their touch. Instead he drifted, curiously removed from his body as it did what it was made to do, to suffer Armand’s affections.

A giggle suddenly escaped him, and it made Armand slap him. He opened his eyes and looked at the coven master, clothed once more and standing over his prone form imperiously.

“Am I a good toy for the little lord?” Nicolas was unable to stop himself from asking, watching as Armand’s nostrils flared in anger and the line of his lips thinned and tightened. 

“You never know when to stop, do you?” Armand asked, slapping him again. It was forceful this time, and it snapped Nicolas’ neck to the side and left a hard burning against his cheek. His world flipped again as Armand struck him once more, and suddenly he realized he was laughing all the while. He had gone mad. Armand had driven him mad, had planted those seeds long ago, and this was merely the harvest. He would have wept if he had any blood left. All he had were these half-begun sobs, these hiccoughs that came out as laughter, ejaculations of agony and despair.

“I give you my love, my attention, my affection, myself, and what do I get? Nothing but petty mockery,” Armand said, sounding wounded. He dealt Nicolas another blow, and another, furious and slow.

“Poor little master,” Nicolas coughed out. He thought he tasted blood, and thirsted, and he knew one of his teeth had been shattered. He looked back and grinned at Armand with bloody teeth, and Armand bared his fangs and snarled, finally clamping his mouth down on Nicki’s neck.

It was the only thing that really shut him up these days, Armand reflected, as he felt the fledgling twist and struggle against him. It reminded him of Les Innocents, no doubt, when his sanity had not been so far nor so close. No, it was far more complicated than that. Nicolas knew, could achieve sanity, but he never knew the key to the lockbox that contained it. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop him from trying, nor from keeping it close to himself, within reach and yet impossibly out of it. He groaned softly at the pleasure of his blood, fiery, rich, and thought of his gratitude that Lestat had left such a gift for him upon his departure. Nicolas’ mind lashed wildly against Armand’s, and he held it tightly without, traveling down the corridors of Nicki’s mind and keeping the memories and visions at bay. He could get lost in Nicki forever, if he were not watchful, and this least of all was a good time for him to do so.

He felt Nicolas go limp beneath him, limbs slack, and he finally released that fragile neck, punctured and abused so many times it was a wonder the skin wasn’t thin already. He looked over Nicolas, whose eyes had gone blank, and noted the blue veins and gaunter appearance, the hollowed cheeks and sunken chest that struggled to take breaths it did not need. There would be no more fight tonight, not from him, and in curiosity, Armand unshackled him and stretched him out when Nicolas did not move. Nicolas stared blankly up, his eyes half-lidded, barely conscious. 

With languid movements Armand bent and licked the blood that was still around his hole. The fledgling barely even shuddered. With a strange tenderness he licked at the much-abused rim, and sank his tongue inside to lick him clean of blood. It excited him, to have Nicolas like this, so helpless, so ragged, and he felt himself rising again.

“Once more, for the road,” Armand said, and he knew that it was dawn soon by the new drowsiness that had entered him. Nicolas did not respond, and his face smashed against the floor as Armand flipped him over and sank into him again. He was soft, for his body was limp and pliable, and Armand moaned at the feeling of fucking into a rag doll, so relaxed and unclenched around him. If only—but it wasn’t to be, not while Nicolas was in his right mind, surely. The only hint was the sudden look of confusion on Nicki’s face, and the drowsy way he tried to open his eyes wider. His body did nothing but receive Armand for a second time that night, and this time his cock rose in interest. He curled a hand around Nicki’s cock, noting the soft noise of discomfort as Nicolas tried to move handless arms to push him away, only to moan when Armand began to stroke him in time with the movement of his cock within. He pushed and pulled, using Nicolas with as much abandon as a true toy, stuffed of oil or wax or lard, and held him to his chest long after he was done. He kissed Nicolas on the lips again, but the violinist had fallen into the death sleep of the day. With a satisfied sigh, Armand tugged his breeches back up and removed what sordid evidence remained of his visit.

Carefully, he picked up Nicolas and laid the fledgling down again on the ground as if in repose, arranging his limbs and his head to surround his beloved Stradivarius. It was Eleni’s turn to visit tomorrow, and it would not do him good to reveal anything to her.

 

The following evening…  
Distraught, she hurried to Nicki’s new cell. Earlier in the evening Armand had bowed to Celeste’s requests to have Nicolas move if he was raving, and Eleni was not told of the development until well after the dancers were done with their routine. She ducked under a familiar archway at Armand’s estate and went down into the dungeons, with their cold earth smell. Nicolas shouldn’t be here. It was too much like his vision of hell, and she would have him recover, even if it was supposed to be a punishment, in wooden rooms that were warm and at the Theatre, or have him under house arrest at least.

Nicolas had barely fought the move, and how could he, when they took him before his dawn? Felix and Jacques had volunteered to follow Armand with the violinist’s body, and had reported back to Eleni, shamefaced, that they left the arrangements to the coven master. It was his own lair, and he had every right.

“Come to see that he is being treated well?” Armand asked dryly as he came down the stairs after her. “I can show you where we’ve kept him.”

“Sire,” she said automatically, though what thoughts her mind had she dared not even entertain. He was dressed in immaculate black as always, sober and plain, and she felt out of place in a medieval dungeon with her skirts and her petticoat. Nervously she smoothed the front of her dress as she followed him into the dark corridors of stone.

“He hasn’t said much, thank heavens,” Armand said with an unusual flippancy, and Eleni reminded herself that this was not a place to chance any suspicion. She said nothing, but could not stop her own gasp when they stopped at the bars to Nicki’s cell, no larger than that of a monk’s room. 

“His deterioration has been marked, but he is a fledgling after all,” Armand whispered. She did not turn her head towards him, transfixed upon the wraith-like creature against the wall, rocking to himself. Nicolas’ back was to her, but he was sitting on the ground, staring at the violin propped against the wall. He cradled his handless arms to himself, curled over them as if still in pain, but from his naked back Eleni could see the ridges of his spine and the blue veins that crossed his ribs, his sunken waist and bony neck ugly indicators of his hunger. He was rocking slowly back and forth, front to back, but he made no sound.

“Has he been like this the entire time?” Eleni asked, not taking her eyes off of Nicolas. Beside her, Armand bowed his head, and said nothing. What could he offer her, anyway? “May I, may I go in?”

“This is meant to be a punishment, mademoiselle, not to provide him any succor,” Armand said, his words firm though they never rose above a whisper. His beautiful rosebud lips pursed when she looked at him, and with a steady gaze he unlocked the cell door with just his mind. They locked gazes as she stepped in, and she did not tremble as he locked it after her.

“Nicolas? Nicki?” Eleni called softly, barely above a whisper, as she knelt down beside Nicolas. He was staring at the violin before him, perhaps, his lips slightly parted, opening and closing his mouth. “Nicki, it’s Eleni. It’s your ‘leni, please, please look at me.” Nicolas stopped rocking suddenly, and he looked up, his eyes trying to find focus on the wall before him. His focus flitted around, never quite landing on anything, never quite able to pay attention. She could feel him fading, and she placed a gentle hand on his forearm, noting that the wounds at his wrists were still raw. She glanced at Armand, who shook his head.

“He has been worrying at them, gnawing to create blood flow and simulate the quenching of his thirst,” Armand said.

“We cannot allow him to keep hurting himself!” Eleni said hotly, but Armand simply looked back at her steadily and arched one eyebrow of judgment. She bowed her head again, trying to coax Nicki to look at her. An agitated sound escaped his throat at her anger, and a flare of fear and sympathy struck her as he looked in her direction. Perhaps not at her, but past her, past the wall behind her, and past all reason. The sight of his face made her gasp. His cheeks were sunken, and the thin skin of his face was pulled tightly over his bone, his eye sockets small caves out of which a thousand-mile stare issued like a mindless beam of light. His lips were drawn and dry, and there was dried blood on the side of his jaw and his chin. He looked like a living corpse that had begun to rot. 

“Oh Nicki…” she whispered, bringing up a hand to cup his cheek. He squeezed his eyes shut as he jerked himself fitfully away from her hand. “It’s your Eleni, Nicolas. I’m here.”

But Nicolas could not heed her. Trapped in the thirst and the pain, the wretch heard her as if through a thick murky cloud. He made to rock himself again, soothed by the repeated motion that provided a queer sort of agency and control. His face was expressionless, his mouth slack as he stared at a fixed point in the distance. Eleni watched for Armand at the corner of her eye and saw that they were alone.

"Shh, Nicki, quickly!" She whispered, rolling back her sleeve to expose her wrist. "Take some from me. I can go out to hunt." Nicolas was rocking again, and even as she wafted her wrist by his eyes and rubbed his back in what she thought was a soothing way, he gave no response beyond shutting his eyes tightly and bowing his chin towards his chest as if to shut her out. It wasn't until she pressed her wrist to his lips that his fangs shot out and sank in with punishing force in his desperation to feed. She had not been prepared for such brutality! The pain lanced through her wrist and radiated up her arm, and with stifled cries of panic she tried to pull her hand away, but she could not wrench herself from his sucking mouth without hurting him. 

He gave a soft moan, and brutally shoved his fangs in deeper, gouging her skin and widening the wounds they made. The force of his lips felt like a violation, a betrayal of the deepest order. 

"Nicki, please!" She gasped, feeling faint as she watched some of his bony frame fill in. She should have thought of this, should have planned. Should have fed more, been more cunning. Nicki needed her cunning right now, not her charity. 

She could hear voices sounding, but they were faint and dim beyond the deep slow thump of her heartbeat, laboring to feed the demand from Nicki's insistent hunger. Fingers dug into her arms and she felt the air rasp around her as her flesh tore, bits of her wrist coming away as Nicolas tried to clamp onto empty air. Celeste was here and she was kicking Nicolas away as Dominique yanked Eleni backwards. Eleni tried to thank her, to ask what they were doing here, but Nicolas was snarling at Celeste, ducking and whimpering at her vicious kicks at his middle. The heavy shackles around his ankles were making it hard to curl away, and Eleni saw Felix from the corner of her eye move to hold Celeste back. 

"Stop! It was instinct! Mere instinct!" Eleni tried to shout, but her breath came short. Nicki had taken quite more than she thought, and she staggered backwards on Dominique for support. 

Like an animal Nicolas snapped his fangs at Celeste's ankles as she lifted her skirts and tried to kick him backwards. Eleni followed his gaze and realized he was frantic, distress written clear across his face as he lunged again and again for the blood that would heal him. The chains were secured to an iron ring in the floor, and Nicki was so desperate his chains were taut against it, pulling at the ring with newfound strength, Eleni's strength, as he lunged again on all fours towards Celeste. 

"Give! Blood! Give it to me!" He managed to growl, and the way he hunched, leaning painfully on his stumps, made him look feral. 

"You can't take so much!" Felix scolded, and dodged the snap of Nicolas' fangs at him. "Please, Nicki! Let us help you!"

"Help?!" Nicolas shrieked angrily, throwing himself towards Felix, only to sprawl, undignified, landing and skidding on his chin. He struggled to right himself, to roll over, but the chains were heavy and he was disoriented by his fall. 

"Take it back from him, Eleni," Celeste offered, as if trying to be helpful. Daintily she snatched Nicolas by the arm, avoiding the grotesque wound at his wrist, and pressed it to Eleni's lips. 

A brief moment of clarity passed over Nicolas and she met his eyes as he nodded once before shuddering as if succumbing to the madness once more. 

This time she fell through his memories, passing them like pasteboard sets, lit with drama and intimacy. Nicolas and Armand fighting in the street. Nicolas and Lestat making tender, soul-searing love. Nicolas as a child, bright and solemn, attentive to a story around at a fireplace. She landed in a tree so full of riotous color it was as if it was aflame. A jackdaw flitted from branch to branch and she gasped as it landed on her hand, its round pale eyes peering at her, twitching and flicking its tail. A part of her knew this was Nicki's way of trying to keep the maelstrom from her, to protect her from the madness he could not keep at bay any longer. It was too idyllic to be a real memory, too picturesque to be possible in real life. She had gone through his sacred memories to be here in the safest of places. 

But the sky darkened and the clouds gathered, a roiling mess of thunder and grey wool. Large fat drops of rain began to fall, and when one struck the jackdaw in the head it squawked indignantly, making her laugh despite herself. The rain gathered in sheets and she picked up the warbling bird and shielded it from the droplets with her hair. It shivered against her, and it felt like Nicolas was weeping. The rain was salty against her lips and she huddled around the bird as the rain went on and on and the thunder rumbled closer and closer until it gathered all around them. And still she could see no lightning. 

The bird shivered again and it felt so small against her that her heart ached for it. It was underfed and she found herself trying to hold it tightly in her hands, but it was skittish and couldn't allow itself to be caught. 

"Please, I just want to help," she pleaded as she tried to get it to stay still in her lap. The rain was gusting now and blowing in her face, and as the wind picked up and knocked the bird over, she caught the jackdaw in her hands, nearly falling off her perch in the tree. When she opened her hands it lay in her palm, still, one wing broken. "I'm so sorry. Oh Nicki. I am so so sorry."

It opened one eye to look at her blearily, and before she could say more its little head flopped down again and it was still.

Lightning struck, and she smelled ozone and fire one second and damp and cold the next as she was pulled out of the vision, Dominique holding her firmly as she shook with fright. 

"Oh for heaven's sake," Celeste snarled, and pounced on Nicolas' prone form. 

"What is she doing? Stop her! Let go of me!" Eleni commanded, but even Felix merely looked on as Nicolas' body seized in a series of tremors. His skin paled again, and traceries of blue lace crept through him and shrank, binding him in the bloodless wounds that were his veins. When Celeste released him at last he was shaking unstoppably, trying desperately to tear at his wrists for blood. She cackled, and dealt him a light kick in the chest that sent him falling back as if she were tossing aside a feather. 

Hands held Eleni back as she tried to slap Celeste, but the female vampire was laughing as she watched Nicolas grovel before her, rubbing his cheek against the rough stone floor as if it would yield blood for him. If he was thin before, he was starved and approaching comatose now. Eleni's knees gave out beneath her as she watched some blood dribble from the scrape he made in his cheek, and with desperate small grunts he tried to lick at the rough stone and his own face. Whatever hold he had left on sanity was nowhere to be found. This wraith before her, this diminished and desiccated draugr, was a creature of greedy need and eternal hunger. 

"Let him go," Eleni begged, her voice leaving her as she watched Nicolas prostrate himself before Celeste, then Felix, kissing the stone floor before their feet repeatedly. There was nothing more she could do. A dangerous thought came to her. There was still time. He had said, what seemed like ages ago, that he would not wish for death, not ever. He had pronounced an omen, one that he had charged her to keep him safe from. Get him away from Armand. 

"Who's the awkward ostrich now, maestro?" Celeste goaded, bending down towards the uncomprehending madman. She stuck one pointed toe in its embroidered silk slipper out for Nicolas to kiss, but when he stared at it blankly she kicked him beneath the chin, no more than a light tap, but one that sent him sprawling to the far wall. "So the high and mighty fall," she simpered with a mock-curtesy. 

Nicolas used his forehead as an anchor to feebly pull himself up the wall and sat, panting. The hunger in his eyes was fading with every breath, but his trembling and shaking did not diminish. He lay on his side, propped up on one elbow, and nudged the violin with his head. He twisted himself towards it and his body wrapped around it as if forming a shelter, making tiny grunts of effort, wordless and mindless. The violin was familiar. It was certainty and a path back to something he'd lost the way to long ago. He struggled to lower his face towards it, to press his cheek to it, but it was hard to control his stif and feeble limbs, and he was suspended in a painful awkward angle. The violin could give life, speech when no words could be found. He had so much to say but all he could find were screams that meant blood. 

"He's no fun like this," Dominique complained. 

"He almost destroyed us all with his selfish antics! He's a madman. Armand should have just cut off his legs instead and made him write. He wouldn't be nearly as much trouble," Celeste said with a sneer, making Felix take a step back and Eleni snarl at her. "What else is he good for?"

"That's enough, Mademoiselle Chatelaine." They turned to see Armand hovering in the darkness, his angelic face passionless as always. Nicolas gave a soft moan and turned his face to the wall. He had not even the energy to rock himself, but his entire body trembled with tension and Eleni could see him rubbing his cheek against the stone in the faintest of movements. She wrenched herself away from Dominique and rushed to Nicolas, who did not so much as flinch.

Armand approached Celeste and with delicate gestures, took her face in his hands. His long fingers stroked her neck as he said softly, "we do not take the blood of other members without their consent."

Celeste's eyes widened when Armand yanked her neck down to his height and sank his fangs in to the corner where neck met shoulder with an audible crunch that made Felix wince. Her mouth opened in shock and horror, but she remained still, her fingers stretched out to grasp empty air. 

Eleni turned back to Nicolas and stroked his cheek softly. He stilled and his large eyes closed. It felt so much like what happened with the bird that Eleni bent down and whispered a promise in his ear. "I remember my promise. I will keep you away from Armand."

The sentence on Celeste carried out, Armand dropped her unceremoniously into Dominique's arms. He looked radiant, the blood working in him to fill him out and color his cheeks. It was a travesty, his beauty, and the terrible coldness of his person. 

"Visiting time is over," he decreed, and when the others turned to leave but Eleni remained, he added, "unless you wish to share the same fate." Celeste moaned in Dominique's arms, urging her to walk faster, to get her to some prey. Eleni wished she was dead. 

"Sire," Eleni began as she rose. Nicolas paid her departure no mind, having resumed staring off into space with his features slack and his eyes half-lidded and deceptively serene. "Please."

Armand raised an eyebrow, but she continued, "when will it be enough?"

"The judgment remains mine and I take the burden of carrying out the sentence. These consequences you know I bear," Armand replied, if a trifle testily. He was much better at emotion these days, she thought. If only to project irritation. 

"We will need him for a new play soon," Eleni attempted. 

"We have always desired new plays. He is not the world's only composer," Armand replied. "Now unless there's is pressing business with the theatre, mademoiselle, I shall see you tomorrow."

Eleni's lips thinned, but Felix was tugging at her arm and she knew if she talked with Armand much further it would come to blows. The plan in her mind began in earnest then, and she cast a final glance at the still figure on the floor before she repeated her silent promise. One way or another she would free her broken jackdaw. 

Nicolas heard them leave with the fainter sounds of their heartbeats and thoughts, and he screamed within. Everything was blood. Everything could be his, and he had to get up, had to will himself to rise. There was something he had to do, things he had forgotten, a passage to Cairo--

"Dear heart," Armand said tenderly. No, not him, not now. He had to will his limbs. Eleni had promised something--

And then Armand was touching him with those long fingers and he thought he shuddered but he was still here and he hadn't been dreaming. No, no, he couldn't tell Lestat about this. He couldn't bear to. There was something, he had been meaning to get there, he had--

"Alone together once again," Armand whispered, so soft, so tender. 

He had--he still felt adrift, his body not his own, and he had to tell, he had to do something but the words wouldn't come, stifled by the screaming in his head. Armand knew, he knew and he spoke over and his words hurt so much and still Nicki--he felt a trembling start and he shivered and his mouth twisted and and--

"You can be truly mine."

No, not those hands, not there. He, there had been something, a plan, he--

"Hush, hush," Armand admonished, and had Nicolas made some sound? He couldn't remember. If only Armand would let him alone so he could think--he moaned at the touch of those clever fingers as they moved up and down the front of his breeches. He couldn't get away. He felt like a husk, a dried bit of weed or herb. "Well you are a disappointment, aren't you? But you are not well, my pet. You need medicine," Armand cooed, and Nicolas could have cried in frustration. If he could only focus! If only everything weren't made of blood and all he could do was curl up against it, helpless and thirsting inside and out. 

"I know the sort of medicine you require," Armand said with a smirk, unlacing his own breeches before impaling him in one smooth motion. It sent a spark of electricity running through him, piercing through to the core of him. It drove the breath out of him and the pain was immediate, like fire and ice and the rasp of stone on raw flesh. It felt far away and all around him, pressing in, and he felt his body melting in Armand's hands. He was helpless, his limbs limp, and the one rigid thing inside him belonged to Armand. 

But he had not the energy to even squirm. He could hear shallow pants escaping his mouth but he felt mute as the world moved, the pain barely spiking the edges of his mind. He tried to move his fingers and his mind shied away from why he couldn't, and when Armand slapped him he barely flinched. He was slipping away, he could feel himself falling backwards, and he tried to keep his eyes wide and open as he strained to see. 

A low deep ache was working its way into his back as the rocking grew more violent. Somewhere Armand was moaning softly and Nicki's body jerked forward at every thrust, scraping and skidding across the stone floor. He was being turned over, his neck was being mouthed and he thought he was shuddering, he had to tell Armand--

"Wake up, my darling, come back to me," Armand whispered. "You've been so good and it has been a hard journey. Return to me. Return to your master."

Nicolas wanted to tell him he couldn't, but his lips worked and scraped against the stone floor and nothing but a moan escaped, then another, guttural and weak and punctuated by a hitch every time Armand moved them forwards. 

"I know what you need. Nghh, you're so loose now, you greedy slut," Armand was saying and Nicolas moaned again when hands grasped his half-limp cock and tugged at it viciously as if they could strip it. It was painful, it was painful, it was, it was--his world flipped and swirled again around him and he thirsted so much and Armand slapped his face, throwing his head to one side. He felt raw, exposed, vulnerable. He was all of him before Armand and still he wasn't good enough!

Wet drops formed around his vision and Armand leaned down, filling his entire world, bending his back even more, and with a long tongue licked the tears from Nicki's eyes and cheeks. He did not want to take pleasure in this, but before he knew it he was nuzzling against Armand's hand, so lonely and in need of relief, he had to allow himself this small grace of a tender touch. Surely there could be something that wasn't pain, something he could gladly surrender to. 

"Shh...yes, my love, only me..."

He gave another whimper when suddenly, he felt impossibly squeezed, the haze and pain sharpening for one second as Armand swallowed the tiny amount he had come, pathetic and nothing more than a few drops of blood, for he had none to spare. And then the pain was back again, brutal and quick, even Armand shaking with the force of it. And and and then and then the spikes of pain wrapped around his cock and his balls and it felt like he was being sliced open because Armand was still stripping his now over-sensitive cock and where were those sounds coming from?

"Please please please please stop please stop stop stop stop..." Nicolas hissed out, begging now, abject, and a fire lit up in Armand's eyes and the pain only became worse as he squeezed Nicki's cock and crudely stuck two fingers into him alongside of his own pounding flesh, squeezing into Nicolas and making him choke. 

He convulsed again, coming dry this time, and Armand ratcheted up the speed again, his cock burning now and on instinct Nicolas tried to close his legs, to get away, but Armand leaned forward and thrust brutally so his breath got caught in his throat and then used his elbows to split Nicki's knees down to the floor, pressing and pressing and adding to the inflamed blur of fire that had become his lower half that burned the rest of him in its thin, stretched-out agony. 

"Pl-" he gasped, "please p'ease p's p's p'saaaaaah! Aaah aanngh aanh," he begged, aflame and burning as Armand's fingers hooked his entrance wider and his other hand palmed Nicki's head, driving him mad with unspilt sobbing, his lips working soundlessly as his breath hitches inside his throat with every thrust. 

His mouth was a desert. His body was aflame. And he wept tearlessly as Armand kept rubbing the head of his cock, and it seemed like a long time before the fire and the knives came through again and he tightened and Armand groaned and then he was screaming, finally screaming now, dry and hoarse and unable to stop himself from coming again, painfully, convulsing against Armand's cock as it felt his body tighten. 

Helplessly Nicolas tried to move, to escape, to a place where he could forget these things were happening to him. His limbs thrashed feebly and the scream went on and on as Armand kept his hand tightly wrapped around Nicki's cock, his thumb swirling agonizing dry circles around the over-sensitized head and stroking him even harder whenever he bucked and came and came and came. And came. And screamed, hoarse and dry and as much fire scraping through him inside and out. The only way he could escape was with more screams, the long and frantic and desperate screams of a man no one could hear. "No no no no no no no no," he mouthed, or thought he mouthed, through the ragged distorted gash of his lips. 

"No one is coming for you. No one will ever come for you. And if they did, you would not be wanted once they saw you," Armand said, low and insidious. "All you are is mine. Scream all you want. You are mine to command. Now come for me again." And Nicolas complied, bucking and shrieking in pain as Armand stuttered his thumb over the twitching swollen red worm that had once been Nicki's cock, and still he could not stop spending himself, his cock barely able to respond as the elastic band inside him twanged again and again, stretching ever longer and ever tighter and scraping him against itself to come dry like thorns running inside him and out. If he had blood he would have drooled from his open mouth. 

He could no longer see, the edges of his vision sparkling with black stars, and dimly he was aware he was finally gone before that part of him died too. Time slowed. The fire was dimming and he was but a cinder in the flame, curling and dissolving into pain and pain and pain, no longer any part of himself surviving. His arms thrashed uselessly but they were slowly losing their control and falling to his sides. The crest of orgasm came again, painful and powerful and liquidating everything around him. It was just pain and pain and pain. Pain scoured him clean until there was nothing left. 

Armand thrust brutally into him, his hips in a frustrated frenzy, and he wanted to slap Nicolas again, to make him moan, but his screams had died out long ago. Those lovely fucked out noises, that pleading, why did it take so long for him to break Nicki down? With another disappointed grunt Armand finally emptied himself into his private slave, and slumped slowly down on top of Nicolas. 

The violinist's eyes stared into space as before, but the light that had once been in them was completely gone. His body gave involuntary twitches as he tried to move his thighs to shield himself, but he was splayed open, like a frog against the floor, trampled and limp. His cock gave the occasional shudder, for though it retreated and tried to hide, it had learned its place and its role ten orgasms ago, and it dared not stop. 

"You'll always be mine," Armand promised him as he tugged his breeches up. "And the next time I expect you to pay more attention." Nicolas stared at him uncomprehendingly, but when Armand raised a hand he gave a terrified start, thrashing once feebly, for his body was no longer his to command. He was like an animal, lost on the shores of sanity and ready to dive down into the abyss. Armand smiled that saintly smile, cold and uncaring, and when his hand screwed and twisted Nicki's cock in his hand one final time Nicolas gave a violent twitch that smacked his skull against the floor. As he convulsed and then seized, Armand tugged him by his cock to the wall and shackled him to it once more, ignoring his choked off screams, harsh and raw with terror and agony. His body shivered as the seizure died down, and his cock was a shriveled worm, and the darkness slid over him at last. 

 

The following evening Eleni did little but talk, visiting each coven member, addressing their needs, seeking support for the petition she wanted to bring before Armand. The theatre was a tense place these days, no one wanting to incur the coven master's terrible wrath. Everyone was bored. The political atmosphere and violent quarrels had outpaced the indictments of Nicki's more radical plays, making even his direct insults seem tame and subtle. They needed new material and the theatre was liveliest when Nicolas was there, lashing out with furious invectives and quibbling with the members, or mocking and japing with them in good humor and melody. Now they were a band of cynics and musicians, petty little vendettas and minuscule political strife with little else to brighten them. They wanted their music director back, not out of concern for him but out of sheer idle amusement. 

All his allies had vanished, Eleni noted bitterly. Felix truly believed Armand had his authority to do what must be done to preserve the safety of the coven. Nicolas had had an instance of public madness too naked, so to speak, to bewitch away. It had taken choice visits to printing presses to prevent the incident from being reported. Laurent was caught up in revolutionary fervor but he subscribed to his worshipful obedience of Armand as usual. The coven master had trained him well in those early days of his tenure at Les Innocents. Eugenie would do what she needed to survive, regardless of what happened to Nicolas. Delphine, Nicki's favorite violinist, had been shipped away by Armand to Vienna for a year of study with the coven there. The resulting fight had broken Armand's arm and kneecapped Nicolas for a week. He had done nothing but play the most scathingly irritating and caustic music for a week after that, and would have continued had Armand not threatened to break his hands, too. The others had left or hated Nicolas or openly mocked him or were too new to care or were away for one reason or another. But at least they liked Nicki's provocative outrageousness, his need to seek a reaction. For someone who professed to need nothing and no one, he was curiously concerned what people thought if his actions. 

She had had to convince the entire coven to prevail upon Armand to release Nicki into their care. Then she could make plans. Fortunately not too many favors were asked and promised, and Armand did not appear at the theatre at all that evening even though they played to a full house. Eleni feared he might be spending the entire night "ministering" to Nicki. She had not missed the bloodstains on Nicki's breeches. It made her wonder about those times she had found Nicki alone in his room, covered by little more than a blanket and blood sweat, eyes glazed and listless. She had thought she had stumbled upon the aftermath of Armand and Nicki's lovemaking, and perhaps that was true, only there was little of love in it. If only she had not trusted the two of them alone together. If only she had paid closer attention to Nicolas' fits and not dismissed them as some random effluvia of his all-too-obvious madness. 

When she visited him that night to tell him the news of tomorrow's coven-wide endeavor, a mere first glance told her he would not heed it for days hence. He had curled up with his back to the bars. She could barely see him breathe, but he stared forward just the same, eyes forever fixed on the same distant point in space, his face expressionless. It reminded her of when they had first spied him, a living doll, newborn fledgling and quite clearly ruined in mind and soul. And she had done that. All of them. 

Nicolas gave no indication that he knew she was there, even when she placed a careful hand in his shoulder. Usually he at least would flinch before reminding himself she meant no harm. She marveled at how she had not truly appreciated the meaning of this before, that he forced himself to relax and trust her when every memory his body held shied away from her in terror. Did he force himself to calmness when Armand touched him? He did no such thing to new members of the coven, naturally, having not experienced a rape of mind and soul and body at their hands, even if it had not been sexual. Ah but the four survivors of Les Innocents were well intimate with Nicolas the mortal, and all the colors of his screams and all the twists of his body as he suffered. And they were now his gaolers. He had never really escaped after all. 

She sat with him for half the evening, guarding against Armand's intrusion until the coven master himself visited, surprised to see her there. Nicolas was still comatose. He looked like the broken castoffs of a doll factory, scuffed and bruised, staring with his large, trusting eyes, his breeches torn and ragged. She sat by him, black silk gown spread around him on the cold stone whilst Armand stood watching them in silence, dressed in sober black linen, long fingers adorned with gold and jewels.

"You won't find much company in his present state," Armand said suddenly, when she reached over to caress Nicki's curls. They were the only part of him untouched, silken and rich and dark.

Armand seemed to shift at that, and she swiftly snatched her hand back, afraid of his possessiveness. He stood there in the gloom without much purpose or intent, but still she felt as if he was asking her to leave. 

"Are the chains really still necessary?" She asked softly. The rough iron manacles dug cruelly into Nicki's ankles, and the skin around then had been scraped raw though he had not moved. They would have been swollen if he had any blood to spare. "Can he not have a blanket?" The violin was already forgotten, lying on its side, its polished body the only fine thing left of Nicki's shattered life. 

"You have not witnessed his fits of late," was all Armand said, not quite answering her. They exchanged evaluating glares and Eleni bowed her head in submission. Tomorrow. Now was not the fight. "Haven't you business to attend to?"

"Sire," she replied, bowing her head again before she rose. It was terrible to pass him by, and as he watched her leave she thought she saw a horrid mask of hatred pass over his placid face. Was it her fear that had imagined it? She hurried upstairs and paused for a breath she did not need, and still she felt the weight of his regard. No spying on them like this. Armand knew. But as she climbed onto her horse she thought to do something she had not attempted in a long time. 

She cast her mind into another's, not Armand's but instead seeking out the echoes of Nicki's mind. It was no longer the whirling Charybdis of before, but instead she entered from the other direction somehow. At the bottom of the spinning storm of thoughts and memories was a pit. Without thinking she jumped into the water and was washed through a tunnel of memories that made her scream out loud, startling her horse and throwing her out into reality. She sat, trembling, hugging her horse's neck in fear and horror. She had touched those memories and received flashes of images and sounds and feeling as she swam in them, washing out of the tunnel into a vast, dry cistern with a hollow that led to the ocean and drained. 

The blue of the sea beyond was a harsh light cast into the dry cave, and as she was dumped out of the tunnel she felt a hand snatch at her foot, and when she looked down she saw Nicolas, whole but tightly shackled to the wall beneath the outflow, eternally drowning as the water sluiced over him, even as he stretched his neck as far as it would go to try to get some air. His waterlogged clothes hung loose around him and his eyes were wide and frantic as he reached out for her. 

But the water kept coming as he choked, and with it images of Armand. Oh, such images! Eleni wept into her horse's mane, shuddering at the brief glimpses she had of Armand torturing Nicolas, cutting him open to hear him scream, suspending him in chains to rape him at his leisure, and the Box, that horrible horrid box. She shuddered and stifled her sobs, angry but afraid to be discovered so close outside Armand's estate. How dare he! Tomorrow, she promised herself and to Nicki, as she turned her horse back towards Paris. Tomorrow, they'd take him away and Armand could never touch him again!

When Eleni had left, Armand rushed to Nicolas, inspecting him and pawing at him with greedy hands. 

"What did she do to you? What did she say to you?" He asked under his breath. How dare she! Was she going to try to take Nicolas away? Armand had always dominated by sheer power and will. He was no stranger to brutality. But this was a different era, and the new members of his coven he could not understand. They were like willful children who possessed none of the faith and fervor for whatever he could twist their minds to. With Nicolas he had succeeded, but it had taken so long, far longer than he had expected. 

He slipped a hand beneath Nicki's waistband and caressed the curve of one butt cheek, kneading it and spreading them with a rush of possessiveness. Nicolas gave no indication he was aware, even when Armand whipped his breeches down to his ankles, as far as he could go, and bent him forward on the floor to plunder his abused hole with his long fingers. Dry and only a little loose from the constant rapes, his passage barely protested as Armand hooked his fingers past the first ring and stretched it as if playing with a toy. 

Annoyed at the silence, he finally tore Nicolas' tattered breeches clean off, pulling his right ankle upwards to the furthest limit the manacles would allow. Freeing himself from his own breeches took the barest second before he sank with a soft groan into Nicki's yielding flesh, the stiffness of his limbs giving just enough resistance to excite Armand. He set the right ankle over his left shoulder and pulled Nicolas towards him, fucking him sideways to feel the walls of his passage from another angle. 

"It is good...to have variety...in any relationship," Armand pronounced as he thrust in hard with effort, holding Nicki by the leg and hip as he pulled and scraped the fledgling along the floor. He leaned forward and slapped his face hard, once, twice, whipping his head back and forth so quickly he thought he heard a crack. When that received no response he grasped the withered worm of Nicki's cock, abused so severely it shrank from the very air, and gave it a few rough yanks, hard enough to stretch the skin and tug it out to its original flaccid length. This made Nicolas blink, and Armand smiled suddenly as his legs tensed and his buttocks tightened around his cock once more. 

He continued to stroke Nicolas in a way that could only be painful, and watched as the younger vampire came out of the anesthesia of his stupor. 

"Did you think to escape into your own mind again?" Armand hissed, enjoying the tightening as Nicolas' eyes flicked to him, terrified and dreading what might come next. He gyrated his hips and thrust deeper, enjoying the stuttering bestial moan that escaped his captive's lips. "When you enjoy this so much?"

There it was, the hitched sob that would have been accompanied by tears if this wraith before him had any blood left. He slipped a finger alongside his cock, enjoying the stretch and further tightness he created. Nicolas was hiccuping now, and his arms tried to thrash weakly, reaching above him as if his useless stumps could drag him away. He was a ruined thing, and Armand wondered what he would pull from him next, how he would mold him into the perfect slave. He had been wrong about Nicolas, he was not too proud to admit. It has taken him far longer than expected to truly break the creature before him, and he did have to wipe the slate before he could work with it. 

"Yes, this is the only thing you wake for anymore, isn't it? Even if Lestat were here you'd barely be able to show your filthy face before him unless he took you like the whore you are," Armand hissed, feeling uncharacteristically theatrical as he pounded into his unwilling lover. It was getting less exciting now that he had to provide most of the sounds. Nicolas simply had neither the blood nor the mind to do it anymore. He'd traveled beyond instinct and reaction. Either would bring him more trouble and painful attention from the coven master. He just barely existed, caught between muteness and frenetic madness. 

"Time for your punishment," Armand said, dropping Nicolas unceremoniously onto the floor. Nicolas gave no sound other than to shift his cheek against the rough stone as if it could comfort him. Armand would not let him close his eyes, insistent that Nicolas look upon him. But he could create the facsimile of a comforting caress where the stone would scrape against his cheek, drawing out the echoes of feeling from a life past. ”You remember how this goes now. Good."

Nicolas stared miserably at the stone wall as Armand tugged open his anus and fed a leather tube roughly into his passage, scraping at his walls. He tried to relax, if he relaxed it would not hurt as much, it wouldn't, but it had been so long since Armand had done this Nicolas must not be behaving. Armand only did this if he was not behaving, or not entertaining, or not pliant enough, or not reacting. It was all too easy to go far away and keep nothing of himself here in this wretched ruin that had become his world. Too easy for time to pass more quickly. And didn't that just irk Armand. 

There was a liquid sound and suddenly a coldness flooded his insides, the cold ooze of oil passing out of the leather bag that Armand kept filled. And this time Nicolas did not fight, did not kick out or need to have his stupid wrists tied. Armand was right. He knew how this went.

Gradually he felt his insides pushed against themselves as he swelled, the oil taking up more and more space and pushing into his intestines. Armand jostled him as he replaced the leather bag with a new one filled with more perfumed oil, and he could feel the sloshing inside, that terrible pressure holding him suspended in mid-air. It was impossible to escape it now, and every time he struggled to go away, to hide somewhere the pain couldn't reach him, the unbearable pressure of his fullness yanked him back and pinned him in place. 

His legs were weak as his muscles spammed around the tube, five inches inside him, and soft moans rose unbidden from his parched throat. He felt like he couldn't breathe, couldn't handle the intrusion, and when Armand rolled him onto his back his belly seemed enormous, swollen, pregnant with the weight of Armand's love. Dry tears stung his eyes unshed and his mouth opened and closed like that of a fish, struggling for air as the oil pushed up against his intestines and his stomach and his lungs. A normal mortal could not sustain this, but Nicolas was no mortal man anymore, was he?

"My poor Nicolas," Armand murmured, and when he caresses Nicki's cheek the violinist choked on the sob that burst forth. The first time he'd done this was so long ago and even then the comfort was too much to handle, for it had been the final straw to break Nicki's defiance. It had been so long, so long since he felt a gentle touch or a caress or a loving embrace. There was no longer any tenderness in his world, and even this scant and meagre measure endeared him forever to Armand. He would do anything to feel it again, to have the hope, what little hope there could be, that Armand might repeat the gesture.

He quivered with the effort of holding in all the oil. Idly he wondered what scent Armand had used this time, as the painful cramps began. Vampire or not, a body was not meant to handle so much liquid. It softened him, made him pliant as his body struggled to relax and tighten in pulses around the oil. Finally Armand yanked the tube out of his arse and stoppered him with a cork, like a large laughable jug. 

Tears squeezed painfully from Nicki's eyes as his body seized, all his muscles cramping and sending him into shakes that wracked him, broke him. He had fought so much the first time. The beating he suffered when he allowed the oil to release had been much worse than any cramp that came before, and it meant he could not struggle besides. 

His sanity had hung on being able to fight against Armand. But in these moments of suspension, when he would shake and moan and curl up because his body would not, could not obey him, his sanity depended wholly on Armand's beneficence and his command. Only with Armand's word could Nicolas find relief, and though that was a kind of madness in itself it was better than to be hung in cloying sick perfumed oil like a child or animal that had wet itself in its own waste, hung in air from the ties at his ankles and wrists, for two nights, sick on the scent of orange blossom. Armand had taken him easily after that, the oil slicking up his passage as he hung limp, broken, and weeping, when just two days before he’d snarled and mocked Armand for all he was worth, and hissed and cursed as Armand shoved the tube inside despite his kicking. 

Now he moaned softly against Armand's caresses, beseeching him for relief as the cramps threatened to undo his control. Armand swooped down to capture Nicki's lips and swallowed his broken sobs, all the while rubbing his swollen stomach, the skin stretched taut as a drum. If he hiccoughed he felt like he might taste it. 

"Pleaseplease please pleasepleaseplease," Nicolas whispered when Armand broke the kiss, and Armand looked down at him with those eyes that were dead inside and arranged his features into one of compassion. "Please-"

"What is it you want?" Armand asked. Nicolas paused, his mind frantic in his agony as those hands swirled around his belly. What had been the right answer? What was the answer Armand wanted?! Anything else would mean more oil, more struggle, more pain!

"Please," Nicolas whispered again, shutting his eyes. The first time he had had to guess as his cock stood outward and hungry like a flag of his perversions, the oil pressing against his innards and keeping him hard. 

"You know what I want to hear," Armand said, implacable. He pressed down on Nicolas’ distended belly and Nicolas whimpered, opening his eyes at the reminder. He looked torn for a moment.

"Fuck me," Nicolas finally gritted out through clenched teeth. 

"Not if you're asking like that," Armand said, and when his hand pressed down on the swell in Nicki's body he released a soft cry from the violinist that broke into a sob and made his limbs crumple of all control. 

"Master," Nicolas gasped, his mouth open and wanton as he begged. "Please f-f-fuck me! Please fuck me please oh please!" Anything but that, anything but the flush of all his energy out through his useless hole. 

"You've been so good," Armand crooned, rubbing his belly, as if that would soothe away the cramps. "But I should not have to correct you anymore."

"Nonononononooo--" Nicolas wailed, before the hand came down brutally and pushed, every muscle in Nicki's body cramping and curling towards its command as the pressure was too much. The cork shot out and the oil fountained out of his ass, puddling and dripping ylang ylang around him. It clung to his skin, making it slippery, it clung to his hair in cloying breaths and if he burped he was sure he would taste it. And yet it was relief, relief literally at Armand's hand as he pressed and squeezed the oil from Nicki's shaking body. "Oh God..."

"Ah, but you have tried to be so good for me," Armand said softly, letting Nicolas curl his face towards his lap, seeking succor of the demonic angel. Nicolas' limbs shook and quivered as they tried to move, to push. He panted as Armand sank a finger into his open mouth to palpate his tongue, lost and stranded and broken down, not even attempting to bite. Armand sank another into his oiled opening, now so slick and perfumed. "Perhaps I shall grant your wish after all, if only some of it. What do we say?"

"Tttttthank you," Nicki gasped out, the cramps rolling through him still as mortal blood came into his cell, mortal blood he would have taken hard and quick had he not been writhing on the floor. It had not even been necessary to chain him. Armand had his face in his lap and Nicolas curled up against him, needing him, begging for his attention when in his right mind he had little but a scornful love and hate. 

He gasped and panted as the cramps rolled through his body and he tried to shove and flop his head closer to Armand's hands. He couldn't breathe with all the perfume and he couldn't feel anything, his body felt as if suspended. His world was still reeling as a hot mortal cock pierced him from behind and the oil helped the way. Armand's hand struck his buttocks and he tightened around the mortal man fucking into him with rough, sharp jerks. It was over quickly but before he could open his mouth to beg for Armand's cock when before he had nothing but insult and disdain, hot burning mortal fingers grasped his hips. 

Then the second entered as the first waited to reawaken, and this one was larger, even than Armand, and the great hulking beast of a man stretched Nicki's abused passage, pushing him to his limit before tearing into him with long slow thrusts. Nicolas would have fought, could have fought, if he wasn't suspended in pain and disoriented by the enema. Instead he leaned into Armand's hands, trying to caress his cheeks against them as mortals raped him at the other end. 

He lost count of how many had come into the cell, but he thought he could smell his own blood leaking to join the perfumed oil puddled around him. They dropped dead the moment Armand commanded them to leave the cell and impale themselves onto the sharp broken bars of another cell, their minds wholly commanded by the coven master. 

When it was Armand's turn Nicolas welcomed the familiar touch after so many burning boiling hot strangers. He reached for Armand's hips with his stumps and moaned like a willing lover as Armand entered his wrecked and ruined passage, torn and bleeding and shuddering to accommodate. Armand spun him around so they faced each other and watched Nicolas jerk and tremble and still reach for him with hands that were no longer there, begging for succor and relief. 

"Yes, my Nicolas, you do need me, don't you?" Armand whispered as he fucked Nicki slow and hard, making him keen in pain. 

"Please, please, I love you," Nicolas whimpered. It had taken so very long for him to learn. "I-I-I need you." 

"Shh, I'm here," Armand replied, and smiled when Nicolas nosed his hand and opened his mouth to Armand's forceful kisses. Pliant, vulnerable, and begging for Armand's touch. He couldn't have asked for more.

"Please," Nicolas whispered mindlessly, knowing only that Armand wanted to hear that word, and he received relief from the constant pain if he said it. "Please."

"Shh," Armand replied, tilting him onto his side and sliding again into his well-oiled, swollen hole. It was red and puffy around the edges and oozing blood and the white spendings of mortals, but it was precisely what he admired, that sordid evidence of Armand's power over Nicki. Such subjugation! He smiled and Nicolas stared at him fearfully, lost for direction. 

"Very good, my pet. You may rest now," Armand replied, kissing him a final time before finally finishing inside him. 

Nicolas closed his eyes as Armand set his legs back on the cold stone floor and allowed the exhaustion to overtake him. "T-t-t-tthank you, Master."

 

It took three days for Eleni to convince the other three, to have Felix and Eugenie and Laurent agree to visit Nicolas at all. By the night they all approached Armand, Nicolas had been denied sustenance for a week. The manor house was dark and they made their way directly to the tower where Lestat's maker had imprisoned him and where Armand made his lair. Its crenellations stood out against the night stars and accentuated its dungeon-like roughness as they descended into its lower cells. 

They would never evade detection by Armand, not ever, and the moment Eleni pushed aside the heavy wooden door, thick as her palm, he was waiting there in the darkness with little more than a candlestick in its brass holder, unlit. He looked a child, a fresh-faced youth as always, dressed in somber black, and he did not appear surprised to see them. What little expression he had these days was the purview of Nicolas' transgressions and a put-upon irritation that convinced Eleni that Armand no longer cared for his coven, and his mastery was becoming little more than an old habit not even worth putting aside. 

"Good evening," Armand said first, and waited patiently for them to explain themselves. 

"Good evening, sire. We are here to sit with Nicolas. And we seek an audience with you concerning the matter of...his recovery," Eleni said. She looked to her companions, but none of them offered any words, solemn and sober as mourners. 

"What do you hope to even gain from him?" Armand asked, looking bored as they walked down the cold echoing stairwell towards Nicki's cell. 

Their footsteps tapped unevenly on the ancient stonework and Eleni wondered why Armand did not light any of the candles in the hall or in his hand. "Not even your misplaced words of comfort shall reach him now."

It was the way he said it, she realized, so imperiously, as if everything were under his command and control. She clenched her hands into fists, held tightly against the folds her skirt, willing herself not to throw up her claws.

The withered thing curled up against the wall was hardly recognizable. Nearly translucent skin stretched tightly across his bones, for all the flesh had shriveled up like that of a mummy entombed in a sarcophagus. Dark mahogany brown curls floated around the shriveled skull and remained unspoiled, beautiful and shining, albeit tainted by flecks of dried blood. 

"Is he--" Eleni whispered, then stopped for fear of startling Nicolas. The skeleton did not move. If it had not been a preternatural creature she would have disregarded it as a desiccated corpse. 

"He is quite unresponsive, much like when Lestat first perpetrated that particular disaster," Armand said idly. At Lestat's name, the wraith twitched, and the shattered bones at his severed forearms buried themselves in his fine, curly hair. It was the only thing recognizable about him. 

"Nicki, we are here," Eleni spoke softly, kneeling beside him. She reached out, hesitating, her hand hovering over his hair. Finally she bit her lip and in dread, sank her fingers into his head to graze his scalp and brush it back a little. There was no response from Nicolas, and his severed wrists were still buried in his hair on either side of his face as if he were trying to shut out the world. "We are going to take you home."

"He is not fit for the city," Armand said immediately, stepping closer at once. 

"He is not getting better here. The rest of the coven has agreed," Felix said. 

"He will expose us all. You saw him." Armand's expression was unreadable. Eleni looked down and brought her face closer to Nicki's cadaverous face. She could hardly recognize the fledgling he had once been, but his eyes were wide and he seemed to be listening, his shriveled lips trembling. 

"There's nothing he can do now," Laurent added 

"We will watch over him every second," Eugenie promised. 

"So that's how it is to be. All of you are in agreement?"

"We are his coven. We promised to watch over him." Eleni bent down and covered Nicolas' curled form with a blanket. He was naked for some reason and she tried not to think of what Armand would do even to such a wraith. Nicolas did not protest as she bundled him securely, but his eyelids lowered slightly when Felix picked him up and drew him close to his chest, as they had before when he was newly made and about to enter the death sleep of day. He had felt safe and secure as was possible for someone emerging from a world-altering trauma, back in those early nights ten years ago. "All of us are agreed and all of us will act." She as good as threatened Armand to try something, to take Nicolas back. 

"I wash my hands of this should disaster befall him. I know I will be called in to adjudicate before long," Armand promised. They bowed to him, one by one, and Eleni had to stop herself from looking backwards like Orpheus as they took the winding stairs up to the surface and salvation. This was done right. The four of them before Armand could take anything he flung at them and he knew it. 

"How is he?" she asked as they got on their horses and turned towards Paris. Felix looked down at the bundle in his arms. He had been shocked by Nicki's appearance and he was holding on to Nicki with as much protectiveness as he ever had. 

"I think he has fallen asleep," he reported, before shielding Nicki from the night wind as they rode. 

"The others should not see him like this," Laurent said, wind whipping his silver hair back from his face. He looked suddenly so young. "And it would shock him overmuch besides, when he begins to return to himself." Eleni remembered a young man whose hair had turned silver with shock, and who clung to Armand whenever any other coven members approached. His maker had been heartbroken. 

"Let us bring him some sustenance," Eugenie said to Felix. "After you have returned him to his room in the theatre."

"Two at most and no more than that. We don't know what he'll be like." Felix replied, and Eugenie nodded before breaking off from the group with Laurent. The two of them made for the little coaching inns that held so many intransigents, easily missed and forgotten. 

The entire troupe was waiting for them, however, when they arrived at the theatre with their corpse-like bundle. Felix turned his horse south and quickly made for the river and the Ile de la Cite, where Nicki's old townhouse awaited them. Hastily they unlocked the door and shut the windows against any curious followers, and only when Eleni had secured all the doors did Felix feel safe to lay Nicolas in the bathtub and gently begin unwrapping the blanket from him. 

Nicolas stared at nothing, his skull-like visage resting against the ceramic of the bathtub, the candlelight casting gloomy shadows against the hollows of his face. 

"I'll go boil some water," Felix said, leaving Eleni alone in the bathroom with their charge. 

"I'm sorry it took us so long to come for you," Eleni whispered, and stroked one stark cheekbone with her finger. Nicolas didn't even shiver as he stared past her hands moving slowly over him, and he presented no reaction as Felix poured the water in slowly, dirt and filth rising instantly to its surface as the tub was filled. Smells that did not belong to vampires rose from the steam, and Eleni bit back her anger as she sponged the blood and slime from Nicki's skin. 

"But how dim you keep everything!" Came a moist mortal sound from down the hall. Eleni rose to receive Laurent and Eugenie and the two mortal heartbeats she could hear entering the flat. 

"How is he?" Laurent asked softly as Eugenie helped the women with their coats. Eleni shook her head, and could not find words to describe what they found. When she led them to the bath, Nicolas was gone, the tiny wet droplets on the floorboards cooling. Laurent wrinkled his nose at the smell. "Must be old, from whatever he got up to before his last fit."

"No, Laurent. I do not think our coven master has been an idle gaoler," Eleni replied, and she was grateful for Laurent's step backwards. 

"You don't think--surely--"

"You know better."

"Shh, shh, it's all right, they are here to see you, they won’t hurt you darling, shh,” Eugenie's voice sounded from the other room, distracting them from Laurent's momentary disgust. "Get the other one, Felix."

Eleni walked with Laurent to observe Nicolas naked in bed, a skeleton that was hardly able to tolerate the two mortal women being entranced beside him. He’d drawn his stumps up against his face and a whistling sound came from his throat, his limbs shaking. What kind of vampire could be afraid of a mortal within his grasp?

"Nicki, please, please drink," Eleni whispered, as she nudged his unresisting forearms away from his face and brought one pulsing wrist to Nicki's lips. When he did not respond even to this, his eyes wide with terror of these strangers, she sliced through the mortal skin with her fangs and pressed the bloodied skin gently to his mouth. His look of consternation made her want to wrap him up again in her embrace, but he pawed at the warm wrist and sucked the woman so dry that he convulsed the moment her death went into him, his eyes wide and staring and his face in a rictus of shock. The next one went just as quickly, and as Eugenie rushed forward with those white and healthy severed hands, Felix returned through the window with a third, whose death was long and left Nicolas lying on his back underneath the covers, his hands a stark contrast to the rest of his starved body, now steadily filling with blood and color. His fingers twitched erratically and he blinked as he watched them in numb confusion. 

"Nicki," Eleni ventured, and Felix joined her at Nicki's bedside and grasped a trembling hand. 

"Le—le-ni. Eleni?" Nicolas rasped hoarsely, his eyes enormous as they searched her face for any sign of perfidy. 

"Yes! Yes, Nicki, you're safe now!" She gasped happily, and wrapped his frail form in a tight embrace. It took the air out of him and suddenly he wailed, deep and low like a dying animal, and sobbed and sobbed into her breast. "It's, it's all right! You're safe, Nicki, please."

But he couldn't stop his weeping, and his fingers tightened and loosened around her arms without any specificity. 

"You're safe. I'm so sorry. You're safe now." Eleni said, distraught and unable to calm him. He shuddered as he wept, his face buried in her chest, and his fingers around her arms were painfully tight. 

"Can you feel your fingers, Nicki?" Laurent asked, at a loss for what to say. They couldn't recognize this sobbing wretch. Armand had broken him too hard and too deep. 

"I can't, I can't..." He hiccoughed, burying himself even tighter in Eleni's embrace. She could hardly stand the brokenhearted frailty that came with his sobs.

"Give him a moment," Felix said softly, and stood to pull Eugenie and Laurent away. "He has been through an ordeal."

"It's all right. You're safe now. You're safe. We promise. We promise. We'll keep you away from Armand, dear pet," Eleni whispered as she rocked him gently and patted his hair. Choking sobs wracked his body and she tried to rub his back, but every time she did he clutched her rightly and shuddered. 

"Shh...you're safe now."

It seemed an age before Nicki stopped weeping, and he was numb to any stimulus after. It was as if he had never awoken, and no sounds would pass through his lips nor recognition in his eyes. 

"What do we do with him now?" Laurent asked them as he tried to rearrange Nicolas' clothing. They dressed him in the old somber black Gabrielle had put him in, something he wore when out on business, and it made him look much too young. 

"What about his violin? It woke him before," Eugenie suggested, and Eleni nodded to Felix. Nicolas lay on the bed and she had closed his eyes more out of respect than anything, for it felt eerie to have him staring at the ceiling like a statue or a corpse. He was still thin and gaunt but much less nightmarish than before. In a certain slant of light some consumptive beauties might be envious. 

"Here it is," Felix said, and hesitantly they placed the violin beside Nicolas. It gleamed in the dim candlelight and they painstakingly wrapped his fingers around the neck of the instrument and then the bow. Mechanically he stirred, and they held their breath as he opened his eyes and sat up to look at the wood in his hands. Without saying a word he brought it up to his shoulder and from the moment the bow touched down they knew it was not the same. A horrid screech sounded, artless and unrefined and talentless, so different from before, and he dropped the instrument in his lap and lay back, still once more and staring at the ceiling. The only part of him still moving were his fingers, struggling to twitch and move and obey an invisible conductor. 

"We-we need to give him time to recover," Eleni said stupidly, all of them in shock. "Perhaps the skill, the talent has not left him. It must heal like all else." She closed Nicki's eyes once more and bowed her head. 

"Is there nothing else we can do but wait?" Felix asked. 

"We have not the power of time. He...I will visit every day," Eleni decided. "The theatre continues. It will be waiting for him when he wakes. We cycle the shows too quickly anyway."

The four of them stood, leaving the violinist with a violin he could no longer play. It was as his father had threatened to do. His hands had broken after all.

"I'll report if anything changes," she added, before she closed the door after them like bidding mourners farewell. 

"Please come back to us," she pleaded softly when she was once more at his bedside. "I'm sorry I left you alone with him. I'm sorry I did not listen. I am so sorry for all the wrongs we have done to you, Nicki. But we love you so. Please come back to us. Please come back to me."

The world was still and asked nothing of him at last. So he did not wake. Eleni departed, leaving him to his mangled hands and his violin, and for a week she could see no change in him. She dusted over him and bid him feed from the two victims she brought every night, but by the eighth night she had begun to lose hope. 

"I don't know what to do," she lamented to Felix, who accompanied her on this trip. "He responds to nothing. No song or word or story or any sound. No image or memory. Even the mention of Lestat's name does nothing."

"Perhaps his convalescence requires more time. Perhaps he must heal for more than we know," Felix said gravely. 

They saw the light in the window and raced up the stairs. She was about to open the door when Felix stopped her with a gentle but firm arm. 

"If it is Armand, what then?" He asked. 

"Then we see if he was wise not to go after us together when Les Innocents fell," Eleni replied gravely. Felix but nodded, his noble profile a death's head in the shadowy lantern light. 

But they crept silently through the hall and down towards the light, only to find Nicolas not in the bedroom nor in the great sitting rooms, but in his study, feverishly working at stacks of paper several feet high. The violin lay abandoned on the floor, the bow cast aside across the room as if flung there against the foot of the bookcases. By a single candle Nicolas sat at his desk and though he faced the room he paid no heed to the visitors hovering in his doorway. His pace was feverish, and his hands did not hesitate as they scrawled so quickly the ink barely had time to keep up, nor the sand as he scattered it. 

Felix brought a finger to his pursed lips and gently tugged Eleni backwards from the room. The shutters were closed and Nicolas would be safe here even if he collapsed in the sleep of day. And he was working, was he not? If this was how he would recover, it would be best they did not disturb him with questions or words of caution. The volume of work he could produce when inspired was prodigious, as evinced by the stacks of paper already neatly tied up by the foot of the desk. Felix could count two, no, three plays already, and the music already scored. Nicolas was always tidy that way, color-coding the string he used to bind the pieces for each work. 

"But if he doesn't feed?" Eleni mouthed, and Felix shook his head.

"We can see that he does," he replied. "We'll bring him mortals when he pales. Tomorrow, perhaps. Let us leave him for tonight."

But on the morrow they never got the chance. Nicolas called them all to the theatre with bright, feverish eyes and quick sudden gestures. He was dressed tidily, somberly, in all black but for the puff of white at his throat. He looked pale but not starved, and for many in the coven it was the first time they'd seen him coherent. It had been years since he could be clear-minded for as much as even half an hour.

Eleni balked at the amphitheater but took her traditional seat in the audience. When Armand entered from the side entrance, Nicolas hardly flinched. Instead, he bowed as of old and gestured finally to the pile Eleni just noticed assembled on the stage. Piles and piles of papers, neatly bound with colored string. Stacks of papers, to be precise. 

"Twelve plays with musical score," Nicolas said, his glittering eyes following Armand's every move as the coven master approached and snatched up one of the stacks to read. "And timeless enough for rotating."

"What is the meaning of this?" Armand asked finally, after he put down the stack he had taken. He looked bored, as if expecting to have to put down the unruly fledgling once more. 

"Simply a token of good will," Nicolas replied, his voice steady as he leapt onto the stage with nimble grace and withdrew a wooden club from a box hidden behind the pile of plays. With a flick of his finger he lit the tip on fire, revealing that it had been dipped in camphor, and turned into a torch that blazed dangerously close to his head. It made him look like a religious fanatic, filled with the steadfastness of purpose. 

"You shall grant me a Grand Sabbat like those of the old coven," he declared, raising the torch high above his head. "Or I shall make this entire theatre my funeral pyre. I am done with games and tricks and tortures." He looked from Armand's shocked face to the assembled company, and finally to Eleni, for whom he spared a sad smile. "If you do not grant my simple request, you can all burn with me."

"No..." Armand whispered, forgetting himself, but he did not move and his eyes were still on Nicolas. He seemed rooted to the spot. "No, you cannot do this!"

"I promise you this. And you cannot watch me forever," Nicolas said, and brought the torch so close to the pages they flickered against the heat. 

The theatre company clamored in protest, and as Nicki reached down to put out the torch’s fame, Eleni watched the fire die in his eyes at last. 

==

The Sabbat was as dramatic as it had always been, and they looked even more ghastly in their fine wigs. Nicolas would have loved it, if he had not been so calm and still that he seemed a ghost already. There had been a quiet moment in his dressing room when she fetched him that night, when she gathered him into her arms and promised him that she loved him like a little brother. But he simply smiled sadly and drew on his robe. All his bloody clothing they had already bundled into a satchel—they would have no need of it any longer, and they had long given up trying to replace it, so often were his fits, in the end. 

He never touched the violin in the three nights it took them to prepare everything, to gather the kindling, to ensure the absence of people from Les Innocents. He shuddered when they crossed the boundary of the property, hooded robe making him one of the long procession of vampires carefully acting solemn for this great event. Only a few of the old coven were left, the first ones, and even Arthur’s face was free of mirth. Eleni was surprised to see François’ cheeks running red with blood tears. Armand’s eyes were rimmed with red. Felix had blocked all access to Nicolas, and when Armand demanded to see him, the former monk had stood guard in the same room like a chaperone, pretending to hear and see nothing as Armand wheedled, commanded, protested, threatened, argued, and finally outright begged Nicolas to reconsider.

With Felix in the room, Nicolas could stand to be with Armand. Felix was finally on his side again. Felix would protect him. Armand had already tried to dismiss Felix, but the blond warrior had meaningfully stood in the open doorway and stared the shorter coven master down. 

“So. What are we to accomplish with this childish display?” Armand asked, folding his arms and trying to look casually at his fingernails.

Nicolas remained seated at his papers, and willed his hands not to tremble as he pushed himself backwards from his desk. He looked up at Armand slowly, as if to reintroduce himself to the idea, and gathered courage when he met Felix’s eyes.

“It is no childish display. It is a promise.”

“And what do you know of promises?” Armand asked scornfully.

“I promise you that these are the last pieces you shall wring out of me for this theatre,” Nicolas said, his words without heat or fear. He felt very calm. There was nothing worse Armand could do to him than the death he had chosen for himself. The entire coven was preparing.

“If you wish to no longer work, we can retain you as a consultant. Or you can move to the first violinist’s seat. Delphine has been eyeing your stand for years and no doubt would be qualified when she returns from Vienna,” Armand said, attempting to bargain.

“Is that so? She would make a good director. And Marcel is coming into his own. He’ll struggle for a few weeks as first violinist but he will rise to the occasion,” Nicolas said. “Ah, but I shall never work for you again, Armand, nor for this theatre. I shall work for none but the worms and the insects and the vermin in the earth.”

“You cannot do this!” Armand demanded, both hands slamming down on Nicolas’ desk, face a foot from the violinist’s. Nicolas cringed, a full-bodied shiver coming all over him before he suddenly forced himself to become very very still, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Felix take a step forward. Armand followed Nicolas’ gaze to his hands, and slowly he lifted his palms from the desk and stepped back to give Nicolas the space to feel unthreatened. “I forbid it,” he added, with much less ire. He huffed through his nostrils and looked down his nose at his seated violinist and lover.

“There is nothing for you to forbid. I am ridding the theatre of myself. I am giving myself a kind of freedom, you see,” Nicolas said, perfectly steady but feeling giddy inside. He was no longer afraid! He couldn’t be hurt anymore, not in any way that mattered. There was nothing worse Armand could do to him other than what Nicolas himself had already promised the entire world. Sweet death, sweet release, the final gasp and fermata. 

“You are mistaken if you think you can be free of me,” Armand muttered, eyes narrowed, his panic and fury finally getting the better of him regardless of whether Felix was present and could hear every word. At the very least if Nicolas went through with it, Armand would never be permitted to be alone with Nicolas ever again. “I can have you locked up before the ceremony. You’ll have no space but that of a small traveling trunk for the next hundred years, and when I am ready to release you you shall know no god but me and no world but the tiny confines of that trunk. How dare you think to leave me!”

“I was never with you in the first place,” Nicolas replied placidly. He ran a shaky finger over some paperwork. The severing of his hands had taken its toll on his handwriting and his violin playing. He could barely direct the orchestra with the same flair, and would occasionally have to support his right hand with his left so that it would not spasm and seize. Even François made no comment—there was no entertainment in taunting a convicted man. But upon review of the manuscripts and the sheet music for the newest plays, no one complained of any shaky writing. He had painstakingly written and rewritten the pages over and over again until he had finally a flawless let of lines. Eleni had had to clear out a small mountain of crumpled pages, some torn in a fit of frustration, some nearly all black with blotches of ink. “I had thought you to have more dignity than this, my coven master.”

Armand raised a hand to strike him across the face, and Felix was too late to stop it as it flashed across Nicolas’ cheek, whipping his head to the side. A red mark flared and then faded against the too-pale skin. Nicolas took a deep breath, and his words died on his lips as he turned back to face Armand and saw what the coven master wore for an expression. 

Armand dropped to his knees and buried his face in Nicki’s lap with an undefined sound. He seemed stricken with grief, and after a moment’s hesitation, Nicolas stroked the russet brown curls on the back of Armand’s head, and watched as the great coven master quivered in his lap. When he lifted his head his eyes were red-rimmed but no tears tracked over his face.

“Please,” Armand whispered, the simple word spilling from his lips, and Nicolas drew back in surprise. Armand’s angel face was twisted in grief, and his rosebud lips trembled. “How could you do this? I cannot bear to think of you destroyed, lost forever beyond my grasp.”

“My love,” Nicolas said softly, and when he bent and kissed Armand’s lips he could see the tears threatening to spill out of eyes he had been forced to stare at when his entire body was twisted and tortured for the sake of Armand’s depravity. “So much feeling for me?”

“Don’t die. Don’t leave me all alone,” Armand said, his voice thick with panic and sorrow. “I’m…I misjudged. Just, don’t do this!”

“Oh Armand,” Nicolas whispered with a sad smile, and he caressed Armand’s cheek with trembling fingers he still could not control. “I’m already dead. You and your followers killed me ten years hence, you see, and I have been slow in the dying ever since. But now I am ready. And there is nothing you can do about that, little lord.” He rose, and Armand was tumbled to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. He stared up at Nicolas in despair and wonder. “I must attend to other minutiae. There is much to be done. Surely I have granted you enough of my company. I shall see you at the gathering. Bon soir, m’sieur.” Nicolas nodded once, and walked out of his dressing room with Felix, leaving Armand with his fists at his sides, kneeling on the wooden floor looking as if he’d just fallen and Nicolas had been the one to push.

He had spoken to no one and kept his own council, and even now in the procession of vampires Eleni could spot Armand alone as ever, his coven master’s robe edged in gold thread. Such theatrics. Armand’s face was solemn as they took their places in the circle and drew out their instruments, their drums and their violins, their fifes and their reeds. Felix began a low chant and suddenly it was as if no time had passed, the rhythm moving easily through them as they swayed and jumped and leaped around the fire, working themselves into a frenzy. But Nicolas was holding his violin without playing it, his hands twitching as he swung it around while they danced and circled the fire at greater and greater speed, their voices shrieking and dissolving into the night air. 

The end was very sudden. Nicolas had not even given them time to react.

"I cannot play any longer. Give this to my maker," he shouted, shoving the violin into Eleni's hands. He gave her a kiss, soft and tender, on her cheek, and with a final scream, leapt into the flames. 

She hoped her arrangement would work, as they sang and paid no attention to the fire and the blackened figure writhing within, nor his unholy savage screaming as the fire caught his clothes and body alight and flared up into the dark sky, nor the trapdoor that opened at last to admit the burning vampire, hopefully unconscious by now. She looked over to Armand and was surprised to see blood tears rolling down his cheeks as he raised his arms in the air and wailed. Perhaps he had loved Nicolas in his way. They all had. But only Eleni loved him enough to do what he dreaded in order to fulfill a promise she made long ago. She'd save him from death yet again, if only to have the hope of his life one day.


End file.
